Wilders in Rome (2): Crumbling foundations of Euro-supremacist ideology

Edward Gibbon by Henry WaltonMarch 26, 2011, Mr. Wilders continued (see first part) his remarkable horror story in front of a Roman public by referring to Edward Gibbon, a great 18th century British historian, whose "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" (1776-1789, 6 vol.) was a first exhaustive study into the fragility of empires.

Inevitably, Wilders (or his ghost writer, for Mr. Wilders did not study at an University) concentrates on a 402 AD (or 401 or 405 AD) event. Some Germanic [and Slavic, HR] peoples crossed the Rhine river and started an invasion into the Roman Gaul lands. Which lead, finally, to plundering of the City of Rome in 406 AD (or 410 AD). Gibbon's source is Jerome in Bethlehem, who was observing from a large distance in space and time what had happened to the Western part of the Roman Empire. The event is not central to Edward Gibbon's theory about the way and causes of the Roman downfall. But Jerome was one of the few written sources he could access. Historiography has much progressed since then. But Mr. Wilders needed a source to underline his anti-islamic world vision and his idée-fixe about Christian supremacy. So he said:

In the 5th century, the Roman Empire fell to the Germanic Barbarians. There is no doubt that the Roman civilization was far superior to that of the Barbarians. And yet, Rome fell. Rome fell because it had suffered a loss of belief in its own civilization. It had lost the will to stand up and fight for survival.

Rome did not fall overnight. Rome fell gradually. The Romans scarcely noticed what was happening. They did not perceive the immigration of the Barbarians as a threat until it was too late. For decades, Germanic Barbarians, attracted by the prosperity of the Empire, had been crossing the border.

At first, the attraction of the Empire on newcomers could be seen as a sign of the cultural, political and economic superiority of Rome. People came to find a better life which their own culture could not provide. But then, on December 31st in the year 406, the Rhine froze and tens of thousands of Germanic Barbarians, crossed the river, flooded the Empire and went on a rampage, destroying every city they passed. In 410, Rome was sacked.

This intrusion from the North was neither the first, nor the last one that happened during the Migration Period. From the third century on, Roman emperors had been hiring German and Slavic tribesmen as  soldiers, allowing them to settle in different parts of the Empire and using them to keep away new peoples coming from the East and the North. During the time we speak of, the East Roman Emperor in Constantinople was engaging Germans to attack his Western Roman rivals. Due, amongst others to climate change (!), the largely Romanized peoples in the transdanubian and transrhenanian area, were driven from the colder regions to warmer climates. A large part of the Vandals ended up in North Africa, where their state subsisted for centuries. The Visigoths (from Sweden) settled in Spain. The Franks in France. 

And, you'll ask, what has Christianism to do with this? For, in Wilders' opinion, Rome was "superior' because of it's "judeo-christian roots". Well, you are in for a big surprise! Those "barbarians" were Christians, too! A quick look by the ghostwriters into the Wiki would have been enough, to make their master less ridiculous. (Wikipedia about Vandals &c):

Around this time, the Hasdingi [one of the two Vandal tribes, HR] had already been Christianized. During the Emperor Valens's reign (364–78) the Vandals accepted, much like the Goths earlier, Arianism, a belief that was in opposition to that of Nicene orthodoxy [Concilium of Nicaea, 323, HR] of the Roman Empire. Yet there were also some scattered orthodox Vandals, among whom was the famous magister militum Stilicho, the chief minister of the [Roman] Emperor Honorius [in Constantinople, HR].

In 400 or 401, possibly because of attacks by the Huns, the Vandals, under kingGodigisel, along with their allies (the Sarmatian Alans and Germanic Suebians) moved westwards into Roman territory. Some of the Silingi [the other Vandal tribe, HR] joined them later. Vandals raided the Roman province of Raetia in the winter of 401/402.

Oh, my God! Those "barbarians" crossing the Rhine, they were ... Arian Christians! It was a match between Christians, not between believers and non-believers! Like it happens always in war, barbaric acts were perpetrated on both sides. Fellow (orthodox) Christians manipulated Arian Christians to attack Roman Christians. And, believe me, Jews and humanistic polytheists, they were discriminated against and chased away by all three of the Christian sects! 

If you read Edward Gibbon, even superficially, you'll find, that he attributes the decline and fall of the Roman Empire to imperial militarist authoritarianism, in particular the use of hired soldiers in the Praetorian Guard, who acted like sectarian militias in the way of the "stadscommandos" (the city vigilantes) the PVV is proposing now for more "security" in the Dutch cities. Rome's decline and fall came from within, if you follow Edward Gibbon's reasoning. 

From within Christianity, not from the outside.

When Wilders needs a dramatic point, he always comes up with Winston Churchill. Florida synagogue audiences hailed him as the "new Churchill" who will save Europe from Barbary. So, it is time for old Winston, to make his appearance in Wilders' apocalyptic speech:

The fall of Rome was a traumatic experience. Numerous books have been written about the cataclysmal event and Europeans were warned not to make the same mistake again. In 1899, in his book ‘The River War,’ Winston Churchill warned that Islam is threatening Europe in the same way as the Barbarians once threatened Rome. “Mohammedanism,” Churchill wrote – I quote – “is a militant and proselytizing faith. No stronger retrograde force exists in the World. […] The civilization of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilization of ancient Rome.” End of quote.

Winston Churchill was in 1899 writing as a young reporter about the Fashoda Incident in Sudan, stressing the need for Great Britain to secure a North-South corridor in Africa and exaggerating the "danger" of the Sudanese Mahdi movement, in order to get an excuse to occupy those regions before the French would do so. "Mohammedanism" was certainly not Winston Churchill's main concern. Which was proven only one year later, when he participated in the British genocide (the first concentration camps!) against the very Christian South African Boers, in spite of their firm Dutch roots. And it was under Churchill's reign, later on, that Muslim Palestinians and Jordanians were encouraged to fight Jewish immigration into Palestine. Mr. Wilders certainly has a gift. The gift of choosing examples that illustrate the opposite of what he wanted to prove.

Mr. Wilders is not interested in facts that contradict his Manichean beliefs. Christians are always good, or 'superior' at least. Outsiders, in particular Muslims, are always bad, or 'inferior, backward'. A more realistic view on mankind is condemned as "Multiculturalism", in spite of the fact that there are no other civilizations than multicultural ones.

... if Europe falls, it will fall because, like ancient Rome, it no longer believes in the superiority of its own civilization. It will fall because it foolishly believes that all cultures are equal and that, consequently, there is no reason why we should fight for our own culture in order to preserve it.

This failure to defend our own culture has turned immigration into the most dangerous threat that can be used against the West. Multiculturalism has made us so tolerant that we tolerate the intolerant.

These are the rantings of a man, possessed by Angst. If Wilders had an idea of the wealth, the riches and the strength of Western civilization and it's multi-layered cultural content, he would not be afraid of a possible "fall" of our civilization. But he is an uncultured demagogue, who, as a politician, should look out for solutions to the frictions caused by ever increasing globalism.

But, like so many christian, jewish, muslim, buddhist, communist and fascist authoritarians before him, he creates horrible myths about the stranger, whose only concern, he says, is destruction of our society.

In the third part of this series, we'll have a more close look into Wilders' remedies against multiculturalists with "weak knees" and the supposed worldwide Islamic conjuration they would be sponsoring.

The first part was also published in At Home in Europe.

Major pro-Israel giver funds ‘Jihad Watch’ and Wilders' hate-trip to New York

Geller, Wilders, celebrating in LA, 2009

My God, when even the Jerusalem Post is questioning the funding and the motives of the planned 9-11 meeting against the Islamic Center's new premises in Lower Manhattan, why should I refrain then, from mentioning again the scandal of Mr. Geert Wilders' participation in it?

The JP says (September 4) in nits article Major pro-Israel-giver funds ‘Jihad Watch’:

Jihad Watch, the group that is organizing a rally against the planned Islamic center timed for the ninth anniversary of the Sept. 11 2001 attacks, is funded by Freedom Center, a conservative group based in Los Angeles.

An investigative report appearing on the online version of Politico on Saturday says that it has confirmed that the 'lion's share' of the $920,000 funneled through Freedom Center to Jihad Watch over the last three years originated with Joyce Chernick.

The JP mentions a flurry of US Jewish lobbying- and anti-Islamic groups that have been funded by Chernick and the "Freedom Center".

A number of these groups, including the Investigative Project, the ADL and the ZOA, have positioned themselves as opposed to the Islamic center. Other Jewish groups, led by the Reform movement, have been outspoken in supporting the center.

Jihad Watch, founded by Robert Spencer, has in recent months taken on board Pamela Geller, the New York-based blogger who launched efforts to stop the center's building.

Jihad Watch and Wilders claim that Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf would be a "radical" and "being funded" by Islamic fundamentalists.
The funding smear was exposed as utterly ridiculous, when it was revealed that the main Saudi investor in the Center is a major shareholder of hate-mongering Fox News as well. Look at: Amerikaanse Wilders-vrienden schieten in eigen voet! [NL] (comment in Dutch, video in English).

Even if you are a (Sufi!) Muslim who loves your country and its institutions, it seems near to impossible to escape the lies and accusations coming from people like Robert Spencer and Pamela Geller:

Rauf has spoken overseas on behalf of the U.S. State Department, under the Obama and Bush administrations, and has described the United States as a nation whose freedoms benefit Muslims.
He also eulogized Daniel Pearl, the Jewish journalist murdered in 2002 by Pakistani Islamists, by saying that such victims demand a response from Muslims that they, too, are Jews.

But the mere fact that Rauf is a Muslim, is enough for the agitators to depict him as a very dangerous foe of the USA. ("The so-called moderate Muslims are the most dangerous" - Ajaan Hirsi Ali)
We understand very well, that Geert Wilders shares those ideas. They are his daily mantra in Holland and Europe. He is going to say things about President Obama at Ground Zero on 9-11, that even Spencer and Geller do not dare to say. That might be the very reason why they pay with money from innocent Jewish contributors for his flight to New York.
The Jerusalem Post concludes with this remark:

The Islamic center's opponents, led by Jihad Watch, have demanded an accounting of the proposed center's donors, although Rauf has of yet barely raised funds for the center.

And YES: Where does the MONEY come from? It will be somewhat difficult for Geert Wilders to support just this one demand. Wilders himself hides in Holland the sources of the funding of his organization, of which he is the one and only member. A political party organized like a mafia: At least, that would be unthinkable under US Law.

But, alas, our hysterical anti-Islam agitators are not afraid of living in paradoxes and incompatibilities.
For they are not held to account by the men and women we elected to protect our state of law.

Which is at this point of time one of the main roots of European and American troubles.

Wertheim: Modern-day Racism: A Mixture That Calls for Some Clarification | Informed Comment

In front of the tsunami of discrimination and hate-mongering against foreigners and their families, that invades Europe here and now, too few are the voices of intellectuals and scientists, who master the courage to say what they know is the truth: Modern-day hate-mongering is following the same road as recent waves of hate, discrimination, pogroms, ethnic cleansing and mass-extermination rode, just before they burst into collective aggression, war and death. 

In Germany, recently, a team of sociologists, historians and media-experts scrupulously researched the stunning parallels between the genesis of European antisemitism after the emancipation of Jews thanks to the French Revolution during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and modern anti-Islamism. I published an authorized summary of it in HUIBSLOG: Antisemitismus und Islamophobie – Neue Feindbilder, alte Muster [DE] in June 2010. In French (and mostly translated into English), similar studies by Olivier Roy: La sainte ignorance. Le temps de la religion sans culture. (2008).


University Of Michigan Professor (History) Juan Cole publishes a Blog (Informed Comment) since 2002. He is a fine expert of the Muslim world, its history and its diversity. Two of his most recent books are here:

Engaging the Muslim World (2009) sets a possible course for the new Obama administration, doing away with the neocon-inspired Bush "war against evil states".

Napoleon's Egypt: Invading the Middle East (2007) develops a historic parallel between Napoleon's disastrous invasion of Egypt in 1797-99 and the 2003 Bush war against Iraq.

Cole generates a daily stream of posts that deal with the real developments "on the ground" in the Middle East and Asia and intervenes into US debates, learned and less learned, that develop around those issues.

Now and then, Cole publishes a "guest editorial" by another expert. Amsterdam-based retired journalist and writer Anne-Ruth Wertheim develops her father²)'s analysis of the different types of racism here, inspired by the rise of Mr. Wilders' political career, based on discrimination and hate-mongering. Wilders' ideas are racist, in her view. She explains, what mixture of racisme we have to to do with, here.

²) (Prof. Wertheim, Amsterdam University, one of my teachers there during the Sixties)

Ruth Wertheim is announced as follows at Informed Comment (IC):

Anne-Ruth Wertheim is a journalist and the author of various books including De gans eet het brood van de eenden op, mijn kindertijd in een Jappenkamp op Java (The Goose Snatches the Bread from the Ducks, My Childhood in a Japanese Prison Camp on Java, 1994). An Indonesian translation of the book was published in March 2008.She works with the concepts of exploitation/colonial racism (contempt or condescension) and cultural/competition racism (envy and distrust).

Wertheim: Modern-day Racism: A Mixture That Calls for Some Clarification | Informed Comment:
Posted on August 30, 2010

Anne-Ruth Wertheim writes a guest editorial for Informed Comment:

Propagators of modern-day racism, which is often called Islamophobia in an effort to take off the edge, claim that all they are doing is warning people about what they see as the danger of Islam, and that it has nothing to do with racism. But it is a misconception to think that racism only pertains to the physical features people are born with. Throughout history, cultural characteristics that people develop in the course of their lives have also been grounds for maligning and excluding certain groups. The competition racism that mercantile minorities all across the globe have been, and still are, confronted with, as well as the anti-Semitism in pre-WWII Europe, were imbued with cultural prejudices, and never failed to include the item of religion.

Nonetheless it is understandable that people feel confused. Modern-day racism is a mixture of two types of racism, exploitation or colonial racism and cultural or competition racism. Thus, while focusing primarily on a cultural aspect of the group, such as Islam, their religion, there still exists a focus on the group’s physical features. I will try to explain this in my article.

I was born in Indonesia when it was still a Dutch colony. I lived in a beautiful house with my parents and my little brother and sister. Like any child, I looked at the world as something that was just there. There were always Indonesian servants around who were quick to pick up anything I dropped. They would take my dirty clothes and give them back clean and neatly ironed. At breakfast every morning, my mother would sit at the table and talk to Kokki about what she would cook that day, Kokki squatting on the ground as they spoke. And when I was allowed to go along shopping, I would see Chinese proprietors bossing around Indonesians who swept the floors.

My view of the world consisted of three layers, with us white Dutchmen on top, the Indonesians at the bottom, and the Chinese in between.

From one day to the next my view of the world turned upside down when I was seven. World War II was raging in the Pacific and the Japanese occupied the Dutch East Indies. They set up a cruel regime that was to last for three and a half years and sent us and everyone else who was white to internment camps. We hardly had anything to eat, not much of anything else either, and were kept in line with a show of physical force. Our camp was guarded by Indonesian soldiers who were beaten just as hard by the Japanese as we were, though they were fed a lot better.

Now the Japanese were on top and we were at the bottom with the Indonesians in between.

Halfway through the war, the Japanese, who were allies of Nazi Germany, started to follow its example and separate Jews from non-Jews. My father, who was at an internment camp for men, was Jewish, but my mother, who was with me and my brother and sister at the women’s camp, was not. So we three children were half-Jewish and the Japanese threatened to separate us by force from our mother. To keep that from happening, my mother decided to register as Jewish herself and all four of us went to the Jewish camp together.*

After the war our family returned to the Netherlands and I discovered that my father’s Jewish family had been almost entirely killed and my Jewish grandparents had committed suicide the day the Dutch capitulated to the German army.

Shortly before and during the war, both of my parents were gradually convinced of the legitimacy of the Indonesian people’s struggle for independence. As outsiders among other Dutch people, who still felt and thought in a very colonial way, our family had to endure a lot of aggression, which of course had great impact on me as a high school student.

So by that time I had experienced quite a bit of racism and violence and all kinds of images were tangled up in my mind. It was not until much later that I started to untangle the chaos of images. One of the people I learned from was my father, a sociologist of Southeast Asia, W. F. Wertheim. He drew a distinction between two types of racism:

1. Exploitation or colonial racism towards colonized peoples and blacks during slavery and Apartheid. They were considered stupid and lazy and unable to govern themselves, but good enough to do the heavy labour for the ruling white minority.

2. Competition or cultural racism towards mercantile minorities all across the globe who compete with the established majorities. The Chinese in Indonesia and Jews in pre-WWII Europe were considered sly and cunning and accused of wanting to rule the world.

Continuing in my father’s footsteps, I discovered a shift here in Europe and thus also in the Netherlands. The first guest workers from Turkey and Morocco were confronted with the familiar old-style colonial racism and they were looked down upon. As is witnessed by the numerous references in modern-day racism to the alleged inabilities of immigrants, this tendency to look down on these people is still very much in evidence. But now that their children and grandchildren are better able to compete, the racism is starting to exhibit more elements of competition racism and to focus more on their cultural features. It is turning against Muslims and in essence all non-Western immigrants.

So, at the moment, a shift can be observed from the colonial, exploitation type of racism that focuses on physical features to the cultural type of racism that focuses on cultural features such as religion. Being somewhere in the middle of this shift we now have to do with a mixture which combines elements from both types of racism.

This modern-day mixture is nicely illustrated by the language the extreme right-wing Dutch politician Geert Wilders uses, slyly intertwining looking down on people with inspiring fear of them.**

In this chart I show exactly where the differences lie between the two types of racism. To start with, they apply to totally different groups. This is directly linked to the kind of work they do and their economic position. In this connection, there is also a difference in the prejudices that are put into circulation. In colonial racism, the prejudices have to do with contempt and disdain and focus mainly on physical features, and in cultural racism they evoke fear and mainly focus on cultural features. The intentions behind the prejudices are completely in line with what they are supposed to justify, in one case exploitation, in the other exclusion.

When I write and talk about these two types of racism, something that always strikes me is how much more familiar the exploitation type of racism is to people than the competition type. Racism that pertains to groups that are forced to do the heavy work and are considered to be stupid and lazy, is widely known, and the human damage caused by colonial and post-colonial procedures is recognized manifold. But the other type of racism that pertains groups that are competitive and for that reason accused of being dangerous and striving for total domination, is amazingly unknown. Nevertheless this last type has also caused and still causes much damage in the world – ranging from pogroms on Chinese mercantile minorities everywhere in Asia, to the expulsion of the Indian- and Pakistani mercantile minority from Uganda, to what happened to the Jews in Europe.

It is also interesting to see what makes people believe in prejudices that they nonetheless prefer to keep to themselves. No one is about to admit how much they like feeling superior to another group. And in our competition-ridden society, envy and jealousy are frowned upon; anyone who has less than someone else has only himself to blame. This capitalistic ideology was aptly stated recently by Dutch right-wing politician Mark Rutte when he sardonically referred to a higher tax for the rich as jealousy tax. So it is no wonder people would rather not admit their envy towards the competitiveness of immigrants and prefer to be carried away by cheerleaders for the fear of Islam.

Lastly, the violence – be it extremely diverse – that accompanies each type of racism. In the case of exploitation racism, only a few rebellious individuals are publicly punished to keep everyone else in their place. The group as a whole, after all, has to remain healthy enough to do the hard work. But the intention of cultural racism is to exterminate an entire group or expel them from the country. History has shown that this kind of mass violence is set in motion once the epithets that really scare people have been uttered long and systematically enough about a specific group. It is not without reason that people who commit these acts of violence so often say that they had no choice, that it was self-defence. And in every case, the outbreak of violence was preceded by a sharper outlining of the group, accompanied by allusions to expulsion, and a stronger emphasis on recognizing members of the group.

With their seemingly purely economic question about the costs of all the non-Western immigrants and their children and their children’s children, the propagators of modern-day racism in the Netherlands recently put a group in the spotlight that everyone can recognize by the colour of their skin. This is going to mean trouble. But there is still time. Time for more and more people to understand the mechanisms that are in motion and opt for a future of peaceful coexistence.

* I tell this story in The Goose Snatches the Bread from the Ducks. My Childhood in a Japanese Prison Camp on the Isle of Java, which can be ordered on DVD or downloaded via this site.

** See This Link to my earlier essay at IC (Wilders' Lethal Words)
----------------------
Anne-Ruth Wertheim beloofde me vandaag een Nederlandse vertaling, die onmiddellijk zal worden opgenomen.
(Update 1/9/10:  NL versie is gepubliceerd in Huibslog: Anne-Ruth Wertheim: Hedendaags racisme, een mengvorm die verheldering verlangt [NL] en in De Lage Landen, plus Krapuul: Nuttig essay van Anne-Ruth Wertheim: Wilders’ koloniaal- en concurrentie-racisme)
Eerdere versies van bovenstaand artikel van Ruth Wertheim verschenen op Republiek Allochtonië en Weblog Anja Meulenbelt.

Belgium Upside Down

In surrealist-minded Belgium, a stupid error may easily turn into a wise comment.
French TF1 Television channel was going to inform their public, yesterday night, about the actual political turmoil in the neighbouring country. A map was needed, to indicate where Belgium is, and how it is divided in three regions.
Here is the map. Please, find the TWO biggest errors:

You saw it!
The French speaking Walloons are living in the Southern part of Belgium and the Dutch speaking Flanders people live in the North. That is the first error. The second one is less evident for everybody who is not Belgian. The third Belgian region is the Brussels agglomeration. It lies just some Kilometers north of Wallonia and not in the middle of Flanders. An informed French blogger jubilated ironically: ‘This is a final solution to the Belgian mess! French speaking Brussels in the middle of Wallonia, in stead of being surrounded by frustrated Flemish.’ Only the mutual ethnic cleaning between North and South, would be somewhat onerous…
Why is that turning upside-down of the Belgian crisis so funny?
You should know, that the division of the country into regions is language-based. Dutch-speaking Belgians were overlorded by French-speaking elites since Belgian independence (1830, from Holland). A cultural, regional and political upsurge of the Flemish since the end of the 19th century, forced the Brussels and Walloon bourgeois to accept equality of the two main national languages first, and subsequently a series of state-reforms that leaves Belgium as it is now: a country governed by the two main (linguistic) regions, each jealously guarding its prerogatives. Even international trading has become a regional matter!
(Imagine the Chinese, receiving a Belgian economic mission, that is split up between Flemish, Walloons and representatives of the separate Brussels region! This really happened a few years ago. I’m told, that the Chinese are still laughing…)
Most problems about frontiers are about asymmetry. In Belgium, we have an asymmetry between language and soil. If you divide a country along linguistic lines, you have to take into account, that there are areas of mixed language that do not fit into your scheme.
This is, where the capital, Brussels comes in.
Brussels
A long time ago, Brussels was a Flemish city. We are speaking about the early Middle Ages. Then the Bourguignons came in and attached the whole of the Low Countries (the actual Benelux) to their powerful French duchy. Court- and bureaucratic language became French, the Church turned French. Later on, the Spanish Habsburgs were masters of the country, speaking French. Next (beginning 18th century) came the Austrian Habsburgs, guarding the country against the Dutch, the French and the English and fighting many wars on its soil. The last 18th century war, the one against the French Revolution, they lost. The French sansculottes occupied Belgium and Brussels. Napoleon I even made Belgium part of the French ‘nation’, splitting it up into French Départements. The Vienna arrangements of 1815 gave the Austrian Low countries to the new Dutch king. William I did not bother much about language. His latest spouse was a member of the French speaking Belgian nobility. The Belgian revolution of 1830 was made in Brussels by the new higher middle class of traders and industrialists, closely tied to mighty Great-Britain.
That is why the city (or: region) of Brussels became, in majority, a French speaking city. It has in some neighbourhoods still authentically Flemish speaking citizens and in some places, people mix up both languages in a creative potpourri.  There are no Flemish or French neighbourhoods, anybody can live everywhere. So, Brussels could not fit into the linguistic definitions of the ‘State-Reforms’. And it would not, either, for it has a mission of being a capital, as well for the 60% Flemish majority, as for the 40% French speaking minority in Belgium.
If you consider Brussels as an exception, you have to allow that it is a BIG exception. Brussels bilingual region has 1,2 million inhabitants. Greater Brussels (the agglomeration and surroundings) can claim 2 millions out of a total of 11 million Belgians.
The frontiers between the linguistic regions have been fixed in 1962. After half a century, you may assume, that there have been some changes to the linguistical composition of some areas next to the “frontiers”. This is of course more than true for the growing Brussels agglomeration. To cut it short: Some rural communities around Brussels receive an influx of French-speaking inhabitants, and, as the EU develops, also of many Eurocrats, who do not speak French, maybe, but certainly not Dutch, in most cases.
As an immigrant into Brussels since twenty years, I admire the loose way in which common citizens in the city as well as in the rural communities around it, cope with the linguistical problems in day-to-day life. “Les Belges se débrouillent” - the Belgians find a way out. That is the result of many centuries of foreign occupation, I think. The Belgians let their politicians do and find their own solutions among themselves. In that respect, I see no distinction between Walloons, Flemish or ‘Brusseleers’.
The aloofness of my new compatriots has its merits. But it is also responsible for a surrealistically complicated government, that is the playing ground of regional politicians who are unable to swallow the compromises that inevitably have to be made for the survival of the Belgian contraption.
As I told on several occasions before this, the irresponsible politics of Flemish separatists and Walloon regionalists, are suffocating the city of Brussels, which, on its own, provides 20% of the economic strength of the country. The last citizens rebellion of Brussels (against the Burgundian aristocracy) dates from the 1511 carnival. Will 2011 see a repeat of it?
I must confess: I hope so!

Godless Europeans, are they being punished economically? (Fox news)

Fox News knows best - We, Europeans are a bunch of godless and hapless idiots!
(Thanks to Politblogger.eu - Dietmar Näher, Germany)

No, the following video is not a fake. Fox news is serious about the causes of Europe's economic problems: It is "Secularity" and "abandoning God", that cause our "decline".

This is an illustrationn of the growing cultural gap between (part of) the US and Europe.

Personally, I do not believe in that gap. The fundamental values of the US Constitution are part of the European Enlightenment. Europe is being nurtured by American contributions to our common culture, civilization, economy and philosophy. From more than a hundred years on. A fertile exchange.

The eternal urge, however, to build up an enemy corresponding to one's own image, has been let loose. The Nazis under Hitler built an "East Coast" enemy, the Jewish capitalist. Turning the mirrors at a 180° degree, Fox News constructs an European "pagan" enemy who is disturbing the otherwise paradisaic world of US free market capitalism. We, Europeans, became pagans, and God is punishing us with economic disasters!

I am in favor of developing an European common identity. But not at the price of hate and mistrust of US-American culture. Nor of any other cultural identity. That would be stupid and counter-productive. Neither US-American thinking, nor Islamic thinking can be severed from Europe.

Europe is rich enough in itself. It should welcome any possible contribution and ponder it.
Provided, we do so together!

Clinton and Ashton: US-EU Girl Power Made Netanyahu Climb Down

The three "40+ breakthroughs"

• Hillary Clinton spent 40+ minutes on the telephone with Israeli PM Binjamin Netanyahu, making it perfectly clear that, this time, the Obama Administration would not accept "No" for an answer to its demands that Israel puts an end to its provocations.
• In a first show of which impact a united European stand can have on Washington's capacity to effectively change its policies in the Obama way, Catherine Ashton braved Israeli objections and visited Hamas-governed Gaza Strip on a 40+ hours' mission.
• Combined US and European action made the overconfident rightwing Netanyahu-Lieberman Government give in within another 40+ hours.

Israeli Government gives in and works at damage-control
This morning's Guardian brings a first evaluation: Israel's Binyamin Netanyahu in climbdown over US demands for peace.
The key issue of the clash between the US and Israel was the provocatively announced construction of 1.600 Jewish flats in the contested East Jerusalem area. The Guardian:

He [Netanyahu] did not announce, as the US had demanded, a freeze on the construction of Jewish homes in Ramat Shlomo, in East Jerusalem, the key point at issue.
But diplomats in Washington, Moscow and Jerusalem said Netanyahu had given a private promise that there will be a temporary freeze on any new construction. The work, while not cancelled, is to be postponed for several years.

Substantial negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians are still far away. But this could be a turning point. The Guardian points out, that:

Obama and Clinton stand to gain from the Israeli retreat, which will heighten their reputation among the Palestinians and in the Arab world. Obama and Clinton were left looking weak after a similar stand-off with Israel last September when peace talks failed to get under way.

The EU as a whole is in an awkward position concerning the Middle East. They have big security interests at stake, much more important than those of the US.
During the G.W.Bush administrations, a divided Europe had to remain powerless at the side-lines, when its vital interests were put in danger by the 2003 Iraq invasion, by the Bush-supported killing of the remains of the Oslo arrangements, by the ill-inspired Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 2006 and, last but not least, the Cheney-handcrafted 2008 Georgian disaster (where Israeli "advisers" to the Georgian army played a key role).
A story of exacerbated European divisions
Most of the time, Europe was divided. In 2002/2003, divisions between the Blair-led UK and the other bigger EU powers France and Germany, were even exacerbated, as Blair harangued most fresh Eastern European EU-members and, to a still undisclosed measure, Balkenende's Holland, at the side of the US Neocon Iraq scheme. A lasting European rift was avoided, thanks to the stupidity of US post invasion policies in Iraq, that brought soon striking evidence of the underlying fraud and made it clear, how much the Iraq adventure was and is contrary to every possible European interest.
As part of the big powers' Oslo Quartet, the EU did not weigh much upon the steady dismantling of the two-state solution. As a "useful idiot", the EU furnished and still furnishes, the bulk of the international financial support to the Palestinian Authority, only to see its investments repeatedly destroyed by Israeli bombs (harbour, airport).
And Tony Blair again: As a Quartet appointed facilitator of negotiations in the region, what has he done?

During the 2006 Lebanon invasion, the EU found more of a common stand than before. It helped and helps, thanks to the wisdom of many Lebanese leaders, to maintain a shaky cease-fire at the Northern border of Israel. But proposals by the German Foreign Secretary Fischer, to extend the EU peace operation to areas of conflict between Israel and Palestine, fell on deaf ears.
Another result of the US failures, their pro-Likud stubbornness and their open contempt of the NATO allies, has been, now and then, a revival of outdated particular claims in the Middle East from former European colonizers and mandate-holders. France saw an opportunity, for instance, after the murder of Hariri in Lebanon, to reassert some of its former influence there, as the US hopelessly failed in understanding the particular dynamics of that multicultural society. That did not help to forge a common European stand, either.

Georgia: A turning point in retrospect
But Sarkozy's unique and rapid intervention (as he happened to be president of the EU in 2008) in the Georgian conflict, showed for the first time, that the EU can deal independently with its own interests in the wider region, if it acts quick and undivided.
While Cheney himself was desperately stoking conflict in defeated Tbilissi, France made for the EU an honorable compromise with Moscow that the Bush administration had to bow to.
This was exceptionally possible because of the halfheartedness of the US intrigue in Georgia.
For, in a general way, it is a hard fact, that the EU only can progress in its international security policy, if it is not going against the US and/or Russia's.
A united stand of the EU, even at this moment of the still fledgling Ashton mission, will also influence US and Russian positions, like it seems to me, that has happened now by way of the surprising Gaza initiative of the EU's Ashton.

Let us give the two-girls power a chance!

Obama Health Care Reform is at a Tipping Point. For Europe, too

The historical struggle in Washington about Health Care Reform went mostly under the horizon of the European mainstream press, lastly. 

One understands why. The procedure got stuck, last autumn, in the dark alleyways of US decision-making on the federal level. 
For it is complicated to understand, why a Senate and a House of Representatives, both with a comfortable 50%+ majority of Democrats, cannot agree on a set of arrangements that are, since dozens of years, part of the civilization of most EU countries: Collective insurance, guaranteeing access to health care for every citizen.

Most European countries have adopted a mixed system, where state guarantees and tax measures facilitate commercial insurance companies as well as non-profit co-operatives in providing basic health care to every citizen (and, in many instances: even to non-citizen inhabitants). Paradoxically, Great Britain, champion of privatization, is an exception: It has a completely state-governed NHC system. Even Ms. Margaret Thatcher proved unable to change things there...

What the Obama team is proposing in the United States, is nothing more than a first step into a world, where the 20% not-assured- and the 25% insufficiently protected citizens, will get access to a compulsory (yes!) basic protection against being left behind, when they fall ill. 

The conservative-Democrat and Republican foes of the Reform, are divided as for their motives:

• loss of profit for private insurance companies (representatives sponsored by insurance comps and medicine producers)
• too much state (federal) intrusion into private citizen responsibilities (libertarians and their ilk)
• angst for state constraint on decisions on life and death, on abortion and on church-prohibited matters - imagining local "death committees", repayment of abortion charges, advantages for illegal immigrants and making God-abiding citizens pay for other people's sins while caring AIDS patients, for instance (here we find the fundamental Christian Right together with the Libertarians).

President Obama is not only a fine expert of the American Constitution and its guarantee for all citizens to be able to struggle for happiness, but he is also influenced by the Chicago School of Community Development. This School has adopted the view, that (local) emancipation of people in disadvantaged situations is best served, when their aspirations are coupled with advantages for the men and women in power. The result is a, you could say, rather cynical and resolutely NON ideological approach to empowerment. New coalitions are to be built around every step forward to emancipation and more equality.
That is why, in my opinion, President Obama has spent so much effort and time in building a large and diversified majority for his health care plans, leaving behind, under way, many principles of it, in exchange for support from people of whom he hoped that they would find more (immediate) profit in supporting the laws, than in refuting them.
As the American economy and the American private-public relations are different from the same, when you are dealing with a difficult urban neighborhood, this strategy did not work. Even a provisionally Senate-adopted set of laws, full of "pork"*), could not pass the hurdle of a 60% majority in the Senate.
So, to my relief, Obama changed recently his strategy and decided to use legal means at the disposal of the Presidency and the Democrat majorities in House and Senate. There is nothing revolutionary in that. Former president G. W. Bush made his outrageous tax-cuts for the rich also into law in that way. And he had a smaller majority than Obama.
This Rooseveltian (regulating the cisis-ridden economy during the 30's) and Johnsonian (social system and race equality) Obama-operation, is nearing its completion, these days. It is more than due. Liberal support is withering away, and "tea-party" like demagogy is not only on the move in the US, but also in Europe and in Israel.
In Europe, a Wilders does not hide his contempt for Obama (Copenhague and recently in London), an Ulfkotte spreads his venom on German websites, etc. The Israeli Government humiliated the Obama administration with its continuing colonizing policy.
As of March 15, it seems, when we believe Slate magazine, that the Health Care Bill will be rightly and legally forced on Congress:

March 15, 2010: "I have no intention of not passing this bill," says Speaker Pelosi. She doesn't have the votes, as her own whip, James Clyburn, said yesterday on Meet the Press. But pro-life Democrat Bart Stupak told National Review late Friday, "they've been able to peel one or two of my 12," and he sounds discouraged: "It's almost like some right-to-life members don't want to be bothered." That sounds more like five or six. Fox News calculates Pelosi has 211 of the required 216, with many still undecided, while Nate Silver guesses she'll get "between 216 and 218." Nobody has a clue, but the mood is upbeat. Chance of passage: 55 percent.

Slate's Whipometer: How many vote-switchers does the pope have?

Slate's "Whipometer" indicates a small but real opportunity that the bill will pass later this month.
The European Stake
The European stake in this titanic fight is big. If Obama looses, he will be weakened in all possible fields where Europeans need the support of the US for policies that differ from those that were pursued by the Bush-Cheney administration: Iran, Israel-Palestinian peace, world-wide regulation of hedge funds and credit swaps, Afghanistan, engaging Russia, engaging the Muslim world, nuclear disarmament and also climate change policies.

More so, a continuous divergence between the US- and European(-Canadian) social systems, would kill the necessary harmonization and cooperation in the globalized world economic and financial field. Only if, what I cannot bring over myself to imagine, Europe would abandon its "aquis" in the social field, a harmonization the other way around, would set the conditions for a (doomed) Atlantic supremacist "white 21st century".

There is much at stake in Washington for Europe, the next weeks!

A Wise Man sets the Course for Europe in the World

Due to my travelling to meet Central and East European friends in order to discuss with them the problems of redeveloping urban neighbourhoods in crisis, I missed the newly elected European Council President Herman van Rompuy's historical intervention at the Bruges European Academy.
Here follows a part of it (in English):

Herman van Rompuy speaking at the Bruges Europe College, March 6, 2010.

Van Rompuy is very well aware of his powerlessness. He was chosen by the Sarkozies, the Merkels and the Browns just because of his lack of sex-appeal and supposed lack of ambition, over candidates like Holland's J.P.Balkenende or Letlands former president.
One thing is sure, read my lips, the man is terribly UNDERestimated.
Listen to his Jesuit-, finely tuned-, rebuttal of sarkozist and insular British policies.
Even Eurosceptic Tony Barber of the London Financial Times admitted graciously, that the Van Rompuy speech had class and substance, compared to the voidness of the actions and words of baroness Catherine Ashton, EU foreign secretary.
A full analysis of Van Rompuy's words is under review.
Please, download and read the full text of the Van Rompuy opinion at Consilium Presidential Service in Brussels (English).
.

Wilders' Money to remain hidden to you and me, but open to CIA?

The European Parliament will have to decide, this week, if it allows American authorities to data-mine your and mine international euro-transfers by way of copying the SWIFT data.
Swift services banks in Europe and elsewhere. For instance, when I send some of my Dutch retirement money to my Belgian account, the ING bank warns me, that this may be monitored by American authorities.
I have no problem with that. If the CIA wants to know, that I live in Brussels and that I buy my shrimps there at Delhaize, good riddance, OK with me.
But the EP has a point, when it says, that American authorities have to have a reason, when they ask for Swift data. Any European nation allows prosecution to scrutinize my financial data, or listen to my private communications, only, when there is a probable link to crime or terrorism. If there is no one, I can trust my bank, that it protects my privacy.
So, why does the CIA not trust my national European secret services?
That is a long, difficult and complicated story.
I will tell you another time. For a considerable part, they may be right. For who believes, for instance, our Italian secret service Mafiosos?
So, please, CIA, NSA, search for bank transfers linked to Al-Qaeda! I couldn't agree more.
And, do not forget to tell us about Mr. Wilders, from Holland, who gets millions of dollars from US accounts for destabilization of European nations.
Pardon me, if I watch the Dutch representatives from he PVV "party" in the EP.
What are they up to?
Will they vote for a going Dutch alone, as their program states? Or will they vote for transparency to the CIA, while Dutch public opinion remains left in the dark?
Hey, Mr. Wilders, your credibility is at stake!

Dutch Justice publishes an Anti-Fitna, as Wilders has to appear in Court on 20/1

Somebody within the Dutch Justice bureaucracy must have had a great idea. "Let's make a YouTube Video to counter Geert Wilders! He did his "Fitna" thing in March 2008. We do our Justice thing in January 2010! And it worked! A simple device helped Dutch legal people to becole cool.
This day, 20 january 2010, the Amsterdam High Court, is to listen to Mr. Geert Wilders' defense against the multiple accusations for hate-mongering and incitement to racial hate against Muslims, Mr. Wilders is accused of in the Dutch Court. An official prosecution YouTube is on the air:



Translation:

00:00 (NL-Nu Journalist:) January 20, Geert Wilders will have to appear before the Amsterdam Court.
00:06 He is indicted for offense of groups, hate-mongering and incitement to discrimination.
00:10 The incriminated statements were made in an interview with (Dutch daily) De Volkskrant and in his video release "Fitna".
00:17 (Interviewer:) What has been said and written by Mr. Wilders, that has provoked his indictment?
00:21 (Answer by the Amsterdam Court Press Officer, Mr. Otto Van Der Bijl): In the indictment gainst Mr. Wilders, you'll find a great number of examples, of which I'll mention here some.
00:26 (Wilders in De Volkskrant, August 8, 2007): "The core of the problem is the fascist Islam, the sick ideology of Allah and Mohammed, as it has been written down in the Islamic "Mein Kampf", i.e.: the Quran."
00:35 And also: "We have plenty things we want to happen: Closing the frontiers, no more Muslims entering the Netherlands, and many Muslims have to leave Holland." (Geert Wilders in: De Pers - Online daily. March 27, 2007).
00:44 And Mr. Wilders is also indicted because of a number of statements in his well-known video "Fitna"".
00:50 (Interviewer): What punishment could Mr. Wilders get?
00:53 "For hate-mongering and discrimination, Mr. Wilders can be condemned to one year maximum in jail and a fine of next to 8.000 Euros, and the same punishment is provided by law for offense of groups, which is another part of the indictment. But the issue of the procedure is in the first place a reply to the question, if Mr. Wilders is punishable under Law. The secundary issue is what punishment he will eventually get.
01:14 Freedom of speech is an important civil liberty. But that liberty has its limits. One of them is offense and incitement to hate and discrimination.
01:27 And the Judge in this procedure, will have to decide, if Mr. Wilders has gone beyond those limits.
01:31 (Interviewer): January 20, Mr. Wilders will appear in Court. What do we have to expect that day?
01:35 The january 20 day in Court is an introductory session. Court will decide afterwards, how the process will be handled. The Prosecution will also adopt a definitive opinion only after this session. We expect, that the procedure will be concluded at the end of this year (2010) and the Prosecution will take a stand only at that point of time.
02:02 (Nu-Nl Journalist): Some days ago, Wilders objected to his indictments, but the Court rejected his complaints.

Of course, we are sceptical about the outcome of all this. But, let us be generous, and believe, hope, with me, that justice will prevail.
And will Dutch Parliament have the courage, to exclude one-man parties from participating n elections?
I doubt it. And will struggle to the end.
Whatever the End may be!

Muslims At Home in Europe. Soros Says So. It was always my idea, too.

I do not claim exclusivity for the name "At Home in Europe". In 1993, some time before George Soros engaged into bringing democracy and moral integrity into Central and Eastern Europe, I embraced, together with my colleagues and friends from France, Germany and Great-Britain, in the small create!europe network, that challenging slogan. We were all working at urban neighbourhood emancipation through local integrated projects. Most of us, including me, still are.
George Soros became famous, when he speculated successfully against the British Pound (£) in 1992, forcing it out of the European currency "slang". Much of the money he got out of this disastrous (for Europe) move, was invested, later on, into a series of private initiatives for democracy and civil society in countries like Bosnia, Hungary, Serbia and the Ukraine. Showing, how you can throw bad money to good causes.
The New York based George Soros institute OSI (Open Society Institute) issues a report about Muslims in Europe, focussing on 11 European cities. It is produced by the OSI At Home in Europe Project , and covers:

the experiences of Muslim communities in select neighborhoods in Amsterdam and Rotterdam, Antwerp, Berlin and Hamburg, Copenhagen, Leicester and Waltham Forest–London, Marseille and Paris, and Stockholm.

This report is as much about "being At home in Europe" for ALL its inhabitants, as we imagined it then. Going aganst the popular US and European Muslim-bashing trend, it delves into the kitchen table realities in some neighbourhoods, and depicts a completely different image of daily life, challenges and results than that which the scaremongers to make us believe.
The house is as the people who inhabit it. There is no mythical everlasting cultural "Heimat", defined by the soil upon which it stands.
In order to be at home in Europe, Muslim immigrants, each in function of his/her background (for coming from Morocco or from Turkey, from the province or from the city, makes quite a difference), creates his own form of integration, which is a new, mixed way of life. Like immigrants in the US did successfully in the nineteenth and twentieth century.
Does that mean, that there are no problems? That is another myth about us, "Gutmenschen", i.e., people who try to attack in fact the facts of ethnic cohabitation. Of course, there are huge problems, for the immigrants themselves as well as for the original inhabitants of the area.
The report shows, that, with good will from both sides and much help from the local authority, those problems can be solved, and, astonishingly, even turned into advantages!
How this last, seemingly improbable, magic trick can be made in the course of time, is explained (among others) in my professional website E-Urban, about urban area-oriented policies in Europe.
This is a summary of the report's contents:

Muslims in Europe: A Report on 11 EU Cities

Date: December 2009, Source: OSI

The Open Society Institute Muslims in Europe report series constitutes the comparative analysis of data from 11 cities in seven European countries. It points out common trends and offers recommendations at the local, national, and international levels, including to the European Union and to international organizations. While not representative of the situation of all Muslims in these cities, this report does capture a snapshot of the experiences of Muslim communities in select neighborhoods in Amsterdam and Rotterdam, Antwerp, Berlin and Hamburg, Copenhagen, Leicester and Waltham Forest–London, Marseille and Paris, and Stockholm.

This body of work comes in response to major trends with regards to Muslims living in Europe: whether citizens or migrants, native born or newly-arrived, Muslims are a growing and varied population that presents Europe with one of its greatest challenges, namely how to ensure equal rights and opportunities for all in a climate of rapidly expanding diversity.

The following overview report includes:

• Executive Summary
• Policy Context
• Cohesion, Belonging, Discrimination and Interactions
• Education
• Employment
• Neighborhood and Housing
• Health Care
• Policing and Security
• Civic and Political Participation
• Media
• Recommendations

The publication is available for download below, in its entirety or by chapter.

(For downloading, go to the OSI At Home in Europe Project).

From the conclusions of the report:

“The OSI research suggests that religious discrimination against Muslims remains a critical barrier to full and equal participation in society.The findings of this report are consistent with other research and suggest that levels of religious discrimination directed towards Muslims are widespread and have increased in the past five years. 

European-born Muslims, particularly women, were more likely to perceive higher levels of religious discrimination than Muslims born abroad. European-born Muslim men identify the police as a key source of unfair treatment and discrimination. For Muslims, the persistence of discrimination and prejudice affects their sense of national belonging."

(Hat tip to Dagmar and Mario, Germany).

There report is based on more than 2.000 interviews of inhabitants of the eleven European cities.

"Too many Europeans believe, that the religious identity would somehow hinder the  integration [of Muslims], allthough a majority of the Muslims who have been interviewed, identify to a high degree with the city and with the country in which they live. The role of the City is essential, as well in the struggle against discrimination, as well as in the opening of roads to the integration of foreigners",

said Nazia Hussain (London), who managed the project "At Home in Europe".

A useful antidote against the "Atlas der Wut" (Map of Rage) that Mr. Ulfkotte distilled recently from another US source...

Technorati Tags: Islam, Europe, discrimination, cities, Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Antwerp, Berlin, Hamburg, Copenhagen, Leicester , London, Marseille, Paris, Stockholm

Minaret Moment 8/12 [EN]

I know, how difficult it is, to reply to self-conscious US opinionmakers when Europe is at stake.

Yesterday, the liberal New York Times published an opinion, called Europe's Minaret Moment, by somebody called Ross Douthat. He has read Christopher Caldwell, and thinks that he knows Europe. Comparing the genesis of the US to Europe's birth, he observes, that "a more perfect union" is far away from the manipulation by European "élites" to get a clean and workable constitution for the European Union. He couldn't be more right, when he chastises the European elites' disinterest in the difficulties that non-elite Europeans suffer at the actual economic season.

Douthat:

If the more perfect union promised by the Lisbon Treaty is the European elite’s greatest triumph, the failure to successfully integrate millions of Muslim immigrants represents its greatest failure. And the two are intertwined: they’re both the fruits of the high-handed, often undemocratic approach to politics that Europe’s leaders have cultivated in their quest for unity.

Oh, how much you are right, Mister Right! I am sure, not any member of the European elite has seen the problems coming. Nor any member of the non-elite. We choose to treat the problem NOT as you treated the Indians, relegating them to reserves and poisoning them with alcohol and diseases. We choose to help them integrate into our societies. Most of the Muslims did. A tiny minority doesn't. Like some Muslims in the USA, if I am well informed. Your easy condemnation of an Europe that is just defining itself, doesn't help at all.
Sometimes I think that people like you and Mark Steyn (America Alone) are just loading upon Europe, what you feel to be missing in the US. Historically, your propositions are completely erroneous.

On what it takes, to get a more perfect union
For: Pardon me, Mr. Bouthat, how many years were spoiled, before John Adams was able to convince Americans, that a "more perfect union" were attainable, only if Americans accepted to live together with "foreigners"?
Bouthat attacks an European elite, who imposed a peaceful Europe upon a population who would love to get rid of an immigant group, (Muslims), who seem to want independence and, finally, domination.
I am not convinced at all. I believe, that muslim immigrants in Europe will become "European", while safeguarding their own specificities. That is difficult for the people who have to live next to them, and I agree, that much more has to be done for those last mentioned. The European elites are aware of that. Much money and energy is invested.

European elites are not as stupid as you think...
Is it enough? Is it efficient? No! But it is much more, than American "elites" did for Polish, Italian and Greek immigrants a century ago. Nevertheless, those populations integrated fully into the US society. Accidents on the road, like the Swiss Minaret ban, seem to block any solution to the European immigration problem. But European unity and peace are prevalent upon short term issues like the Swiss Minaret ban initiative. One, like me, may have a minority opinion on Muslim integration in Europe, without being a member of the "European elites". That is democracy, Mr. Bouthat!
More or less like the US solved their problem with the "unintegrated" blacks in the sixties, the European Union will go forward, tentatively, with its programs for integration. And it will succeed. In the end. Each racial clash has its solution.

Europe-bashing does not help
Bouthat's opinion joins a conservative trend that makes the European Union responsible for a sort of giving ib to terrorists. I see no reason for that. Switzerland is not a member of the EU. The OECD, of which the US is a member-state, will surely condemn an eventual Swiss minaret ban. The US are not only indebted to the Founding Fathers of 1787, but also to the winners of the Civil War of 1865. No slavery, no second-class citizens!
Anti-Islamic surges will take their toll. Roma and other minorities will suffer discrimination. But I guess that the people's commitment to liberty and equality, will take the upper hand, when it comes to decide about liberty and democracy. If political elites work to create the right conditions for that, they are doing what should be expected from them.

Technorati Tags: US, European Union, New York Times, Imigration, Islam

Bulgaria: A political earthquake not to be neglected by Europe

For the third time since 1989, Bulgarian voters have inflicted a massive "no" to their political class.
The GERB party (a Bulgarian language shortcut for "Citizens for an European Development of Bulgaria") got 116 of the available 240 seats in the one-cameral parliament of Sofia. Their nearly 40% of the more than 60% vote, propelled the vociferous major of the capital Sofia, Boiko Borissof, into the seat of prime minister.
(Borissov, the virtually nominated prime minister, said on July 9, 2009: I have a program of support to the legal officers who are charged with corruption cases, we are going to invest massively into infrastructure and in European cooperation ... [Photo: Sofia Echo, Krassimir Yuskesseliev])

At the European elections of last month it was already impossible to deny, that Borissovs party was going to carry the national elections, scheduled for July 5.
The high level of participation in the election helped to justify the GERB victory, in spite of frequent vote-buying, an ethnic Turkish vote and "election tourism" on an unprecented scale.

In 1990, Bulgarian voters chased the historic Todor Zhivkov gerontocracy. In 2001, they invested their hopes in the former king Simeon. Every time, they were disappointed. Will the Borissov landslide of 2009 be their ultimate revenge?

Will the third Bulgarian electoral revolution finally bring peace and progress?
In recent years, I had the opportunity to spend some time in the country. My engagement with urban solutions had me relate to a variety of local actors. As I did not know much about the country, like too many ofe to confess the European decision makers who should, I have to confess, that I only have learned about what I do NOT know about Bulgaria. My opinions should be evaluated accordingly. I share, nevertheless, four observations with you, if you'll permit me:

1. The astounding resistance of Bulgarian identity to foreign dominance,
   
2. the dumbing effects of Stalinist and post-Stalinist repression during 45 years,
3. the economic and strategic trump cards of the country,
4. and how the European Union could catch the opportunities for itself and for the Bulgarian people.
   

1. The unfinished Bulgarian Renaissance
In the second half of the 19th century, a seemingly unimportant province of the Ottoman empire woke up. The decline of the Ottoman Empire was certainly of much help. But the emancipation of inhabitants of remote villages, of virtual serfs to absenteist Turkish landowners and of artisans working in the few cities that existed, could not have been imagined without the intervention of an European educated elite of former university students and freemasons. Like the 18th century enlightened intellectuals in France and elsewhere, they concentrated on popular education. It is by force of that drive, that a new Bulgarian nation came into existence on the vague memories of mediaeval culture. It was a very real Renaissance. The Bulgarian Renaissance.
The European big powers of the epoch adopted a double approach. Insofar as the Bulgarian upheaval weakened the Turkish "sick man", they were helpful. But when the Bulgarian independence threatened to offer an entrance to the Mediterranean to the Russian Czars, they blocked.
Bulgarian independence was OK, as long as it did not hinder Austrian plans with Serbia, Bosnia and Macedonia. It should not endanger Greek ambitions in the Northern Aegean either. The Balkan Wars of the early Twentieth century learned a disappointing lesson to upcoming Bulgaria.
That explains why the country choose the wrong side at the start of the two great wars.
Bulgaria was confined from the South by Greece, from the East by Turkey, from the West by Serbia and from the North by Rumania. In spite of all that, the country thrived between the two wars. Its natural resources helped very much to keep international crisis and depression away.
Until about the year 1940, a national entity with half a century of independence, existed. But its existence was fragile: Wrong choices and geopolitical compromises (Yalta, 1944) changed its destination and brought it under Soviet dominance until 1990.
2. The years of emptiness
I spoke with a young woman student, at the start of this year. She won a grade in classical philosophy at Sofia University. I told her, that I was confident, that out of the actual mess of Bulgarian culture, something new and vigourous would develop. But she cut me short. She explained to me, examples at hand, that the nearly half a century cultural desert and all the repression that went with it, killed any hope for creativity and free intellectual life. I was dumbfounded. Who am I, to deny the artistic and cultural disaster that manifests itself daily in Bulgarian television, in the shows of the unexplainable Aziz?
Of course: The classic treasures of Greek and Roman civilization are being preserved. Precious artisanship survives in the valleys of the Balkan mountains. The Rila monasteries receive hundreds of visitors a day. But where is the young generation of artists, writers and thinkers one should expect to havAe established itself after the Big Change of 1990?
I had to admit: It is not there.
How could the energy, the unexploited energy, come back and manifest itself?
The only workable solution, I see, is a new cross-fertilization with Europe. Like hundred, two hundred years ago.
Engish, French and German cultural missions do still exist. French secundary education in a number of cities, has survived the Soviet era. The Borissov program suggests an intensification of those exchanges. Europe has to decide. Leave them alone, let the Americans do their thing, or redevelop and intensify cultural and educational exchange.
It is urgent. Cultural void means negative perception of minority cultures. In the Bulgarian case, that means: suppression of Roma and Turkish identities. Europe should help Bulgarians to get confidence again in their own culture. That is a precondition for respect of others. When you feel safe, you do not envy others.
3. Unexploited economic and strategic opportunities
Bulgaria is a rich country. Without the riches in agriculture and men, Alexander the Great, in the fourth century before Christ, could not have spread Hellenism in the East. He came from the City of his father Philip, Philippople, the actual Plovdiv. At the end of the First century, Trajanus, the Roman emperor, would not have built a road from the Mediterranean to Dacia, if the environment wouldn't have been safe and abundant. Bulgaria is potentially a great crossroad between the East and the West, and: between the North and the South.
The East-West connection is the first to have been reestablished. Turkish trailers circulate by the hundreds between West and East. The EU helps with road construction, but has frozen its subsidies because of Bulgarian maffiose dealings with contracts. The new government wishes to end this and reclaim imediately the lost money.
Iaccompanied by hundreds of Turkish and other trailerst is very important. On the road between Istanbul and Budapest, I am accompanied by hundreds of Turkish and other trailers. We loose many hours in queues and with burocratic rules.
The North-South links are virtually non-existant. It is true, that you can go by modern road from Thessaloniki to Sofia. But what next? A good road that connects northern Greece via the Rhodopes Mountains through central Thrakia with the Balkan throughways ti the danube valley and Rumenia is only vaguely under construction. However, its strategic role is evident: Avoid the Dardanelles and arrive directly in the Ukraine, in the Krim, etc.
Well, if I may give my largely uninformed opinion: We should not consider Bulgaria uniquely as a problem to the EU, but as an opportunity in the first place. An opportunity to get a hold on the difficult situation at the South-Eastern end of the EU ...
4. How to engage the new Bulgarian leadership?
A regional strategy, alas, is not an EU priority. The USA established a giant military base in Blagoevgrad, next to the Greek and Turkish borders. An American university in that city completes the deployment.
But the EU has also its unique qualities. Cofinancing big investments. Giving a hand in education. "The soft dorces will prevail in the end", said a great Dutch poet once.
Bulgaria needs fast trains, reliable motorways, a thriving agriculture. The EU can give that. And more. It is a vision, a global vision, that is not present.
Even if it is reasonable, to keep one's distances with the actual new Bulgarian government, because of it's populism, it should be deemed good policy to encourage the European orientation of Borissov and give him, as long as possible, the benefit of the doubt.
In my experience, local projects that engage local actors, and represent a genuine mutual confidence, will do a great part of the job. That is how the "soft forces" will win.
In the End.

Copenhague: Dutch parliamentarian Geert Wilders reveals himself as an ethnic cleanser...

Dutch parliamentarian Geert Wilders was interviewed in Danish television last Sunday.

What he says, boils down to a call for an ethnic cleansing of Europe. Listen to his statements here:

In short: There are too many people from Muslim descent in Europe and they have more children than others. Muslims have been contaminated with "a criminal ideology" (Islam). That is why there are so many criminals among them. They have to be sent away immediately. But that is not enough: Anybody who starts "thinking about Sharia and Jihad" or "Caliphate" should be deported too.

"Muslims want to take over our culture" and "change it fundamentally". That is why we have to start deportations to the countries of origin (of their parents).

Like every ethnic cleanser, Wilders adopts a salami tactic: First isolate a part of the ethnic group and earmark them (and their families) for harsher treatment than foreseen in the Law. And in the Denmark interview, Wilders is already targeting a second, larger category: "those who THINK about jihad and sharia". For Muslims, there is not only no freedom of expression any more, but even no more freedom of thinking. Logical conclusion: As you cannot know what a person thinks, every Muslim (or person from Muslim descent) is a potential danger. That is why he is ranting about "tens of millions" of people to be deported from Europe.

Wilders is no more your daily oddball. He has a large constituency in Holland. And more and more admirers in the US, in Israel and in European countries. He has to be taken seriously. Like we should have done, for instance, with that oddball poet Karadzic around the year 1990, when he prepared the ethnic cleansing and mass murder of non-serbian Bosniaks.

The UN The Hague Inernational Court is at this very moment constructing its case against Karadzic, digging into his agitation from before the Yugoslav Civil War.

If we prefer to avoid ethnic cleansing operations in the future, it is there, in the new International Court, where Wilders belongs.

Who has the guts to indict him?

Dutch hate-mongerer Wilders turned into hero by Rupert Murdoch [EN]

The New York Wall Street Journal (WSJ), owned by Rupert Murdoch, is known for its heroic struggle against anyone who it deems guilty of blasphemy of the free market, the stock exchange, composite investment vehicles and US moral superiority in the world.
It is so busy with its crusade and its inquisition against men and women who make use of their right to free speech on these subjects, that, alas, it neglected recently its core business, that is, if I am not mistaken, to inform the public, specifically the financial world, about the upcoming financial crisis, about the Ponzi schemes and about the fraudulent balances of main financial institutions.

You and I would expect, that the WSJ, like the London Financial Times, would be doing some self-critical introspection at this point of time.
The opinion makers at WSJ, could, for instance, reflect upon the billions of dollars the US are pumping every year into the Saudi Kingdom, enabling it to maintain a barbaric internal police regime and, worse still, financing fundamentalist and retrograde, even terrorist, institutions abroad.

I have seen nothing of that in WSJ. On the contrary. Not unlike Saudi Mollahs, it identifies Satan as exclusively coming from abroad.
WSJ featured heavily, for instance, the lying demagogue Mark Steyn (America Alone), also known as a Canadian humorist. Steyn specialises in Canada- and Europe-bashing. Collective health care, feminism, birth control, so he says, produce countries that are already lost to (Islamic) barbary. America alone, has to do the job. With crackpot wisdom, for instance, about the Istanbul Aya Sofia, that should be unislamized, he reaches a vast audience. Only a pity, that since 1939 the Aya Sofia building has been desacralized by the Turkish Parliament, and is a Museum now, with exhibits that illustrate the Christian as well as the Muslim history of the 5th Century edifice.
Another Europe-basher (when she is not trying to return to Europe) is Ajaan Hirsi Ali, a former Dutch parliamentarian of Somali origin, who is employed by the neoconservative American Enterprise Institute in Washington since 2006. She, or Daniel Pipes, could well have been the author of the WSJ-opinion under the heading:

"Silencing Islam's Critics - A Dutch Court Imports Saudi Blasphemy Norms to Europe."

It appeared two days after the inauguration of Barack Obama as the 44th US president, who stated that in the US there has to be a just place for Christians, Muslims, Buddhists and Non-believers. Its conclusion:

The [Amsterdam] court yesterday overruled this decision [i.e: the August 2008 Prosecutor's decision NOT to prosecute Mr. Wilders, HR], arguing that the lawmaker should be prosecuted for "inciting hatred and discrimination" and also "for insulting Muslim worshippers because of comparisons between Islam and Nazism."
This is no small victory for Islamic regimes seeking to export their censorship laws to wherever Muslims reside. But the successful integration of Muslims in Europe will require that
immigrants adapt to Western norms, not vice versa.
Limiting the Dutch debate of Islam to standards acceptable in, say, Saudi Arabia, will only shore up support for Mr. Wilders's argument that Muslim immigration is eroding traditional Dutch liberties.

Well, the point is, that Mr. Wilders is not seriously criticizing Islam as a religion, but that he is all the time targeting all Muslims, representing them as a permanent danger. He summarily rejects any perspective of "working together for a more perfect union", even systematically refusing proposals for dialogue, made to him by Muslim groups.

Mr. Wilders has had all freedom of speech he could wish for. Now he has to bear the consequences of what he has been saying. The Dutch juridical system is not unlike any other in the Western world. On the issue of blasphemy, it is more liberal than the American practice. It is not of "blasphemy" that Wilders is accused, but of hate-mongering ("haatzaaien"). A nation that is committed to a peaceful togetherness of its citizens and to equality between gender, religion and ethnicity, has to protect itself against systematic hate-mongering.
It is as if the WSJ forgets, that US law is imposed upon the Ku Klux Klan racist hate-mongerers, and rightly so. No "freedom of expression" for them. And people who deny the Holocaust, should we give them "freedom of expression"? In France, Mr. Le Pen, also a parliamentarian and party leader, has been condemned more than once for hate-mongering against Jews and against immigrants from Africa. A former French Communist leader, turned Muslim, denied the Holocaust and was condemned in court, in spite of his old age. That is what a civilized society does. In Europe as well as in the US.

So, it is not about blasphemy, but about systematic racist agitation. And it is not about freedom of expression, but about hate-mongering by someone who knows that he is lying. Or, maybe, he doesn't know, but then a psychiatric team has to be called in.

Back to the WSJ and its tendency to find European (Canadian) giving in ("appeasement", "capitulation"), to the Enemy (in an earlier phase, it was: "soft on Communism"), as a main cause for the actual woes in Wall Street.

As always, its explanation comes from inner policy.
Murdoch and his WSJ team cannot (yet) attack openly the new course of president Obama, who pleads for American-European dialogue, with the approval of a large majority in the US. Therefore, it is being done by the way of a bit of misinformation about an event, most Americans do know near to nothing about.

It all boils down to a cowards' intrigue, to sabotage the new American foreign policy, an offense to a Democracy that defends itself (the contrary to "appeasement"!) and to the integrity of Dutch justice. (Which might come handy in, where the The Hague International Courts for genocide and war crimes are concerned, that are boycotted by the US, and that will have a role in prosecuting war criminals from recent conflicts.)

Well, and if the WSJ is so concerned about Saudi "norms" (which it should be), what about an oil boycott against that regime?

Technorati Tags: Wall Street Journal, Europe, Netherlands, Wilders, Hirsi Ali, Daniel Pipes, Islam, Racism, Mark Steyn