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A new piece by the great European essayist Fjordman.
At the EU Observer, Anthony Coughlan, a senior lecturer at Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland, notes that in every EU member state at present the majority of laws come from Brussels. Why do national politicians and representatives accept this situation? He suggests a plausible explanation:"At national level when a minister wants to get something done, he or she must have the backing of the prime minister, must have the agreement of the minister for finance if it means spending money, and above all must have majority support in the national parliament, and implicitly amongst voters in the country. Shift the policy area in question to the supranational level of Brussels however, where laws are made primarily by the 27-member Council of Ministers, and the minister in question becomes a member of an oligarchy, a committee of lawmakers, the most powerful in history, making laws for 500 million Europeans, and irremovable as a group regardless of what it does.
"National parliaments and citizens lose power with every EU treaty, for they no longer have the final say in the policy areas concerned. Individual ministers on the other hand obtain an intoxicating increase in personal power, as they are transformed from members of the executive arm of government at national level, subordinate to a national legislature, into EU-wide legislators at the supranational."
EU ministers see themselves as political architects of a superpower in the making. By participating in the EU, they can also free themselves from scrutiny of their actions by elected national parliaments.
According to Coughlan, "the great bulk of European laws are never debated at council of minister level, but are formally rubber-stamped if agreement has been reached further down amongst the civil servants on the 300 council sub-committees or the 3,000 or so committees that are attached to the commission."
EU integration represents "a gradual coup by government executives against legislatures, and by politicians against the citizens who elect them." This process is now sucking the reality of power from "traditional government institutions, while leaving these still formally intact. They still keep their old names — parliament, government, supreme court — so that their citizens do not get too alarmed, but their classical functions have been transformed."
Tony Blair, in one of his final interviews as British PM, stated that "The British people are sensible enough to know that, even if they have a certain prejudice about Europe, they don't expect their government necessarily to share it or act upon it." In other words: The British people should be sensible enough to know that their government will ignore their wishes and interests if it deems this appropriate, as it frequently has in its immigration policies.
The European Union is basically an attempt – a rather successful one so far – by the elites in European nation states to cooperate on usurping power, bypassing and eventually abolishing the democratic system, a slow-motion coup d'état. Ideas such as "promoting peace" are used as a pretext for this, a bone to fool the gullible masses and veil what is essentially a naked power grab. It works because the national parliaments still appear to be functioning as before.
This is perhaps the most dangerous aspect of the EU: It is increasingly dictatorial, but it is a stealth dictatorship, whose most dangerous elements are largely invisible in everyday life. What the average person sees is that the EU makes it easier for him to travel to other countries without a passport, and use the same Euro currency from Arctic Lapland in Finland to Spain's Canary Islands off the African coast.
This appears convenient, and on some level it is. But it comes at the price of hollowing out the power of elected institutions and placing it into the hands of an unelected oligarchy conspiring to usurp ever more power and rearrange the lives of half a billion people without their consent. That's a steep price to pay for a common currency. But people do not clearly see this is their daily lives, and seeing is believing. The enemy that clearly identifies himself as such is sometimes less dangerous than the enemy who is diffused and vague, since you cannot easily mobilize against him.
Alexander Boot, a Russian by birth, left for the West in the 1970s, only to discover that the West he was seeking was no longer there. Boot believes that democracy, or in the words of Abraham Lincoln, the government of the people, by the people and for the people, has been replaced by glossocracy, the government of the word, by the word and for the word.
Glossocracy can be traced back at least to the slogan of the French Revolution in 1789, "Freedom, equality, brotherhood." As it turned out, this meant mass terror, martial law and authoritarian rule. The more meaningless the word, the more useful it is for glossocrats. This is why the notion of Multiculturalism has been so useful, since it sounds vaguely positive, but ambiguous and could be used to cover up vast changes implemented with little public debate. The impulse behind Political Correctness consists of twisting the language we use, enforcing new words or changing the meaning of old ones, turning them into "weapons of crowd control" by demonizing those who fail to comply with the new definitions. The European Union, a French-led enterprise, is currently the world's pre-eminent and most unadulterated glossocracy.
According to Boot, a dictator whose power is based on bullets is afraid of bullets. A glossocrat whose power is based on words is afraid of words. The EU has drawn up guidelines advising government spokesmen to use "non-offensive" phrases when talking about terrorism. The word Jihad should preferably not be used at all, or should be explained as a misunderstood term meaning peaceful struggle against oneself. These recommendations are being implemented. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, in an attempt to avoid offending Muslims, in the summer of 2007 banned his ministers from mentioning "Muslim" and "terrorism" in the same breath, following attempted terror attacks staged by Muslims - including several medical doctors - in Glasgow and London.
To quote Paul Fregosi's book Jihad in the West: "The Jihad, the Islamic so-called Holy War, has been a fact of life in Europe, Asia, Africa and the Near and Middle East for more than 1300 years, but this is the first history of the Muslim wars in Europe ever to be published. Hundreds of books, however, have appeared on its Christian counterpart, the Crusades, to which the Jihad is often compared, although they lasted less than two hundred years and unlike the Jihad, which is universal, were largely but not completely confined to the Holy Land. Moreover, the Crusades have been over for more than 700 years, while a Jihad is still going on in the world. The Jihad has been the most unrecorded and disregarded major event of history. It has, in fact, been largely ignored. For instance, the Encyclopaedia Britannica gives the Crusades eighty times more space than the Jihad."
At the same time as the memory of 1300 years of almost continuous Jihad warfare and Islamic aggression is gradually being erased from Western school textbooks, "Islamophobia" is being promoted as a serious challenge. By substituting "Jihad" with "Islamophobia," emphasis is moved from Europeans defending themselves against Islamic violence to innocent Muslims suffering from prejudice and racism. An alternate word thus creates an alternate reality.
Italian President Giorgio Napolitano, apparently afraid of what he perceives as growing opposition to the EU project, thinks Eurosceptics are "psychological terrorists." So, European leaders won't use the word "terrorist" about Muslims supporting suicide bombers, but they have finally found somebody deserving the label: Europeans who oppose the EU.
In a frank moment, Jean-Claude Juncker, Luxembourg's PM, once described the EU's "system" in this way: "We decide on something, leave it lying around and wait and see what happens. If no one kicks up a fuss, because most people don't understand what has been decided, we continue step by step until there is no turning back." In The Economist, columnist Charlemagne writes: "What Mr Juncker and those who think like him are trying to do is, in essence, to drown opposition to European federation in a mass of technical detail, to bore people into submission. As a strategy, it has gone a long way. The greatest single transfer of sovereignty from Europe's nations to the European Union took place, in 1985, as part of the project to create a single European market. Even [British Conservative PM] Margaret Thatcher, not usually slow to spot a trick, later claimed that she had not fully appreciated the ramifications of what she was then signing up to."
In 2005 (and again in 2006), the EU's financial watchdog refused to approve the EU's accounts for the 11th year in a row because they were so full of fraud. The European Court of Auditors refused to give a statement of assurance on the EU's $160.3 billion budget for 2004. "The vast majority of the payment budget was again materially affected by errors of legality and regularity," it said. It specifically refused to approve the budgets for the EU's foreign policy and aid programs, many of which are geared towards Arab and Muslim countries. Half of the project budgets approved by the European Commission were inadequately monitored.
This story of fraudulence was largely ignored by the media. The EU Commission is the government of half a billion people from Hungary to Britain and from Finland to Spain, yet it can release accounts with massive flaws for over a decade straight. Such a lack of oversight would have been unthinkable in the USA. The EU gets away with it because it appears distant in people's everyday life and is not subject to any real checks and balances.The EU Commission, frequently diffused through a complicated web of innocent-sounding organizations, create agreements with Arabs and then quietly implement them as federal EU policy. This is accomplished because billions of Euros are floating around in a system with little outside control, and with a few powerful individuals and groups pulling the strings. Europeans are thus financing their continent's merger with, in reality colonization by, the Muslim world without their knowledge and without their consent. It must be the first time in human history where an entire continent is being culturally eradicated with bureaucratic precision. This represents perhaps the greatest betrayal in the history of Western civilization, yet is still largely ignored by the mainstream media in most Western nations.
EU Commissioner Margot Wallström in 2005 argued that politicians who resisted pooling national sovereignty risked a return to Nazi horrors of the 1930s and 1940s. Her fellow Commissioners also issued a joint declaration, stating that EU citizens should pay tribute to the dead of the Second World War by voting Yes to the EU Constitution. They gave the EU sole credit for ending the Cold War, making no mention of the role of NATO or the United States.
This is preposterous. The European Union in fact has a lot more in common with totalitarian regimes such as Nazi Germany - and the Soviet Union - than the supposedly evil nation states it seeks to replace, especially its tendency to suppress freedom of speech, indoctrinate school children with blatantly false information and impose decisions upon its subjects without their consent.
A conference on Racism, Xenophobia and the Media in Vienna in May 2006 was coordinated by the EU. By the end of 2006, the network of media practitioners involved in the Euro-Arab Dialogue had grown to over 500 (pdf). These included people, media and organizations from all 37 countries of the Euro-Mediterranean partnership. European and Arab journalists produced dozens of recommendations on how to enhance their cooperation and promote "mutual understanding" between their cultures and religions in the media.
Benita Ferrero-Waldner, European Commissioner for External Relations and European Neighbourhood Policy (read: Eurabian affairs), addressed the assembly of journalists. According to her, "we do not believe the media should be regulated from outside, but rather that you find ways to regulate yourselves. (...) 2008 is the European Year of Intercultural Dialogue, and I am determined that by then we will have made significant improvements in the level of mutual respect and understanding our communities have for one another. In the months and years to come we must reach beyond the elites to the man and woman on the street. That is a vital part of the fight against racism and xenophobia. And you will be the key to achieving that."This document is available on the Internet, but I doubt most Europeans have heard about it. Ferrero-Waldner also stated that "Freedom of expression is not the freedom to insult or offend. Hate speech is always abhorrent." The EU has in numerous agreements with Muslim countries made it clear that Islamophobia is a form of racism.
The EU in 2007 made incitement to racism and xenophobia a crime across the 27-nation bloc. Under the new law, offenders will face up to three years in jail for "public incitement to violence or hatred, directed against a group of persons or a member of such a group defined by reference to race, colour, religion, descent or national or ethnic origin." The term "inciting hatred" against "religion" could be used to silence critics of Islam and Muslim immigration, especially since the Council of Europe has earlier decided to view Islamophobia as equal to anti-Semitism. At the same time as the EU is signing agreements enhancing the cooperation with, including immigration of, Arabs and Muslims, it is banning opposition to this and is co-opting the media into toeing the party line and promoting the official, Eurabian ideology. The European Union thus increasingly exhibits many of the hallmarks of a totalitarian state, a pan-European dictatorship.
As Robert Spencer commented at Jihad Watch, "Soon Eurabia will resemble the old Soviet Union, in which dissidents furtively distributed samizdat literature and faced stiff penalties if the authorities discovered what they were doing. Europeans who care about what is happening to them will have to travel West, buy books that tell the truth about Islamic jihad, and distribute them at home away from the watchful eye of EU bureaucrats."
The Eurabian networks were created against a backdrop of Arab Jihad terrorism. A series of hijackings and attacks, many of them approved by PLO leader Yasser Arafat, who later received the Nobel Peace Prize from my country, were carried out in the 1970s. Arafat was awarded for this by being allowed to address the United Nations general assembly. During the Palestinian hijacking of Italian cruise ship the Achille Lauro in 1985, American plans for a rescue were thwarted by the Italian government whose "foreign policy required it to maintain very close relations with the Arab states and the PLO," according to Philip Heymann, former US deputy attorney-general.
As Harvard law professor Alan Dershowitz says: "The international community responded to terrorism between 1968 and 2001 by rewarding and legitimising it, rather than punishing and condemning it. Seen in this light, it is no wonder we had to suffer the horrors of September 11, 2001. Those who bestowed these benefits on the Palestinians following their terrorism, especially our European allies and the UN, made September 11
unavoidable."I must take issue with Mr. Dershowitz here: I have heard Americans state that Muslims should like the United States, since Americans have tended to side with Muslims in many conflicts around the world during the past decades. That is actually true, and it is not something Americans should brag about. The Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979 was grossly mishandled by Western leaders, ranging from US President Jimmy Carter to French President Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, as well as Western left-leaning intellectuals and media. Likewise, the reactions to the death threats made by the same regime a decade later against Salman Rushdie met with a muted response. The Oslo Peace Process in the 1990s as well as the Balkan wars, where the United States and NATO actively intervened on behalf of Muslims, firmly established the impression in Muslim minds of a decadent civilization no longer willing or able to defend itself.
It was clearly perceived Western weakness, not aggression, which led to the terror attacks of 9/11, and Americans themselves made significant contributions to this. Even otherwise good presidents such as Ronald Reagan never fully understood how to deal with Muslims. Still, even though Americans made contributions to this problem, too, which they did, it is undeniable that Western appeasement of Muslims started with Western European surrender to Arab physical and financial (oil embargo) terrorism in the 1970s and became institutionalized through the Euro-Arab Dialogue. This appeasement contributed to the resurgence of Jihad that now spans several continents.
The European Union is by its advocates presented as an organization devoted to promoting "peace." The EU never had anything to do with peace; it was and is a naked power grab by European elites who have used it to wage a cultural and demographic war against the very peoples and nations they were supposed to represent. Their appeasement of Muslims not only constitutes a threat to the survival of Europe, which it certainly does, it has destabilized the situation far beyond the borders of Europe. The Euro-Arab cooperation thus represents a threat to world peace. And since this cooperation has become a deeply entrenched feature of the EU, this leads to only one possible conclusion: The European Union must be dismantled as soon as possible.
PS: Former Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovksy fears that the European Union is on its way to becoming another Soviet Union. In a speech, he called the EU a "monster" that must be destroyed: "The sooner we finish with the EU the better. The sooner it collapses the less damage it will have done to us and to other countries. But we have to be quick because the Eurocrats are moving very fast. It will be difficult to defeat them. Today it is still simple. If one million people march on Brussels today these guys will run away to the Bahamas."
The organization Stop Islamisation Of Europe (SIOE) has received permission to stage a demonstration in Brussels against the Islamization of Europe this September 11th. Whether there will be one million demonstrators is doubtful, but it should be possible to gather enough people to get noticed. Citizens of Britain, the Netherlands, Denmark, Belgium, Germany, Sweden, Italy or any other EU member state concerned with Islamic inroads in their country should turn up and protest.
Since the Islamization of Europe is actively and deliberately championed by the EU on a daily basis, fighting Islamization is in my view inseparable from fighting the EU itself. At the very least, demonstrators should carry banners advocating abolishing the Euro-Arab Dialogue, dismantling the Euro-Mediterranean Parliamentary Assembly, the Anna Lindh Euro-Mediterranean Foundation for the Dialogue between Cultures as well as all other instruments for Euro-Mediterranean and Eurabian cooperation. The EU should ban all direct or indirect aid to the Palestinians and distribute this to the defense of our civilizational cousin Israel, it should cease promoting a blatantly false view of Islamic Jihad during 1300 years in European schools and it should immediately halt all talks with Turkey regarding EU membership. Enough is enough.
Posted by Robert at July 24, 2007 10:22 AM
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Elsewhere in Eurabia, Kaddafi's hostage extortion ordeal ends;
Medics freed after Libya-EU dealThe lucky EU nurse hostages today limped home (via Air France) with their cigarette-stubbed, raped, sodomized and electric-shocked flesh (mostly) intact.
But future kidnap victims (that are now sure to follow) won't be so "lucky"-- as other tyrants have certainly noticed how the shamefully inadequate Eurabian politicians approached Kaddafi on two legs... but constantly crawled back on all fours, bearing the jizya.
Posted by: Terp Mole at July 24, 2007 11:10 AMLooking for comfort, they find the Bed of Procrustes.
Looking for security, they find the embrace of the Virgin of Nuremberg.
Two good European metaphors.
Or don't they teach European culture in the EU anymore?
Considering it a form of hatespeech, perhaps?
First join to expel the invaders.
That will unify the Continent in the only way that matters.
Posted by: profitsbeard at July 24, 2007 11:11 AMExcellent piece as usual by Fjordman. This information really needs to get out....I don't see a bright future for the west for many years to come....you can clearly see the direction we are moving in.
As Robert Spencer points out, inoffensive and non insulting speech doesn't need protection. The fact that the EU is clamping down on inoffensive and insulting speech, and categorizing it as "hateful, racist" speech, is already gone too far, yet met with silence.
The EU does make good on their setences also....I believe a Swede went to jail for a general statement referring to the Islamic rape wave in Sweden as "Islamic hordes" and got 2 years in jail.
Remember this when you have the idiots on the left, politicians, academics, or the media puppets calling the US a police state, and accusing the US of denying freedoms.
Posted by: Sneakyzionistcrusader at July 24, 2007 11:38 AMEdit...I meant to say above the EU clamping down on offensive and insulting speech categorizing it as "racist" and "hateful"
Posted by: Sneakyzionistcrusader at July 24, 2007 11:41 AM"The EU never had anything to do with peace". Of course it did. It was out of the ruins of the second world war that people said 'Never again'. I'm always suspicious of Americans or Russians or Chinese who seek the break up of the EU as these are the people the EU is aiming to compete with.
China has an army of cheap labour, India is churning out tens of thousands of graduates. We cannot compete divided.
If losing a bit of democracy is the price we pay for having a strong EU then I believe most Europeans wouldn't mind one bit.
Posted by: BlowHammed at July 24, 2007 11:52 AMAl Gore I was an industrialist and then a politician. He probably worked hard and was smart. He made lots of money for his family and Country.
Al Gore II coasted off his father’s coattails and made money through his connections. He lives in a big fancy house and leads a big fancy lifestyle.
Al Gore III is a twenty-something overweight drug addict who will probably end up dead in a gutter after he squanders the family fortune. If he manages to have a son before the grand finale, he will probably name him something other than Al. This son will probably have a high intellect and have a chance to compete against his peers and start over.
The West in 2007 is like Al Gore III. We are overweight. We are addicted to legal and illegal drugs. The US alone has made $70 trillion in promises to a dependent electorate that it can’t keep and adds $3 trillion to that number annually. And, like young Al, the West in its current form will crash. It is simple economics.
When it does, three things that will not make it through intact are our obesity epidemic, the European Union, and the Western Jihad.
BlowHammed:
..."If losing a bit of democracy is the price we pay for having a strong EU"...
Would you please explain this comment? Are you suggesting that there are personal freedoms that can be sacrificed in the name of security? Should we give up our right to free press, how long until our right to free speach is gone? If we give up the right to own a gun, how long until we are looking down the business end of a rifle? Sacrifice our freedom of religion, and they will tell you what to believe.
Maybe you should rethink your statement.
How soon they forget. The (West) German constitution of 1949 specifically vested more powers in the states and municipalities in order to prevent the over-centralized decision-making in the national capital that they had experienced under the imperial and nazi regimes. Yet for some decades now the Germans have been among the most enthusiastic supporters of the EU and rule from Brussels.
Posted by: ebonystone at July 24, 2007 1:00 PMBlowham, it's not an either/or situation. Democracy and security go hand in hand: a reduction in the former means a reduction in the latter. In the U.S. we've lost a lot of both since the '50's and '60's.
Posted by: ebonystone at July 24, 2007 1:13 PMBlowHammed,
How can the EU give security when they not only have failed to identify the current main threat to Europe, but have also forged political alliances with the adherents of that threat through Euro-Med and the Anna Lindh Foundation?
Can you identify that threat, and if so would you care to offer any evidence that the EU is dealing with it satisfactorily?
Posted by: Amicus at July 24, 2007 1:25 PMThank you for the most interesting essay by Fjordman. It deserves much critical review and consideration, but even from a first glance the depiction of the Brussels legislators and bureaucrats reminds this USA citizen of the apparent mindset of combinations who, without any electoral mandate, seek to subvert the integrity of the USA, borders and all. This they do in their stealthy (but now increasingly evident) drive to create some manner of North American empire with similarly insulated governance.
Posted by: changjin89 at July 24, 2007 1:27 PMOf course there are freedoms that can be sacrificed in the name of security. If you blindly follow some papers written at the end of the 18th century you will fall behind in a rapidly changing world. Tough times require tough decisions and sacrifices. You sound like a spoilt child who doesn't want his toy taken away.
Its so easy for Americans in there geographically comfortable position to criticize Europeans for who they ally themselves with.
These countries know the futility of war and will do every thing they can to avoid it, even if it means appeasement. They feel the sensible thing is to keep there neighbours happy for as long as is reasonably possible. They don't do this because they are cowards. They do this because they have seen death, starvation and the complete destruction of there cities. Until the US has had to endure foreign troops marching through there cities and hoisting there flags, they will never understand the deep and lasting cultural effect it has on nations.
Europeans are afraid of confrontation at the moment but they are not cowards.
Posted by: BlowHammed at July 24, 2007 1:48 PM,,reading this piece gives me the dry heaves..
..or maybe it's that other thing..that I read..
Posted by: Madduck at July 24, 2007 2:57 PM..."These countries know the futility of war and will do every thing they can to avoid it, even if it means appeasement"....
And they also know that the "spoilt child" Americans will leave their "comfortable positions" to once again save the Europeans from the "death, starvation and complete destruction" that their non confrontational appeasement has brought them.
I fly my flag daily, and with pride. There will come a time you will wish to see it marching through your cities.
Yet another brilliant commentary by Fjordman.
"If losing a bit of democracy is the price we pay for having a strong EU then I believe most Europeans wouldn't mind one bit."
I'm sure the Europeans will mind it when their new Islamic overlords drop the pretense of tolerance and impose Sharia law once the Muslim population reaches critical mass.
"These countries know the futility of war and will do every thing they can to avoid it, even if it means appeasement."
Yeah, that appeasement stuff worked great, huh? Just ask Neville Chamberlain. They didn't avoid a war, they allowed one far more terrible to happen.
"Until the US has had to endure foreign troops marching through there cities and hoisting there flags, they will never understand the deep and lasting cultural effect it has on nations."
The US will endure that if enough idiots here aree with your point of view. Your ignorance of history is amazing, BloHardmmed.
Posted by: Proud Infidel at July 24, 2007 3:24 PM If you blindly follow some papers written at the end of the 18th century you will fall behind in a rapidly changing world. Tough times require tough decisions and sacrifices.
posted by Blowhammed
Ah, but the point is that we don't "blindly follow" some 18th c. papers. These papers have been under constant review and sometimes revision ever since then. If we did, we'd still have slavery, women would have no right to vote, we'd have no income tax, and Washington would have much less power. Obviously not all revision has been to the good. But it's been done with public scrutiny and consent.
"These countries know the futility of war and will do every thing they can to avoid it . . . ."
Just think of all the silly-billies who didn't realize the futility of war: Washington, Lincoln, and Roosevelt from the U.S.; Don John of Austria, John Sobieski, Churchill, de Gaulle, and Stalin from Europe.
Posted by: ebonystone at July 24, 2007 3:57 PMSome blindly follow papers written 1300 years ago by a pedophile camel jockey, others follow the words written by their fore-fathers in a living document of courage and self determination. Take your pick.
You still didn't answer the question: which freedoms you would choose to sacrifice, which piece of democracy are you willing to lose?
The EU was conceived as a way of keeping Germany in check by integrating it permanently into a common framework. Over time, the EU has morphed into other things. But one should ask: if an aggressive and expansionistic Germany is no longer a threat, the original impetus for the EU is no longer valid. So the question becomes: do the benefits of union outweigh the downsides. Are super-states necessary in order to compete or prosper? Does an EU need to exist in order to toss the weight of Europe around?
The EU is not a counter-weight to the US, as the French might have it (we'll see about Sarkozy, who seems a different breed), because it has no real unity of opinion and no real military. It probably never will. There are too many differences, and vive la difference.
Are super-states necessary if there is no natural cultural commonality? Is the EU a step to one-world government. Non and non.
The EU is toothless non-entity that only makes for more intrusive bureaucratic meddling, while giving a sense of power to the unelected.
Super-states are not necessarily powerful or influential, if it is obvious to the world that they are simply a formal entity with no real unity of purpose.
Maybe as a free-trade zone with economic ties, the EU has a place. As an entity that makes policy - or imposes it - beyond that, it's just a faceless and futile endeavor. It makes Europe weaker in a kind of anti-synergy, rather than stronger.
We're talking about multiple world powers that don't need the EU. Great Britain, France, Germany - they can throw around their weight and develop their societies without any Big Brother that has no real weight beyond regulating economic matters.
The EU has also obviously proven itself incapable of addressing any of the big issues of the day.
The EU's biggest achievement to date has been to destroy the US-western European alliance and undermine western civilization's global standing in the process. The EU leaders openly oppose a Europe that aligns itself with the United States. Well, what would Europeans prefer? An alliance with Islam, maybe???
(Would they REALLY???).
All this empowered China, the Muslim world, and barbarians everywhere to brazenly move against democracy and western civilization. Americans have borne the brunt of this global development as the events of 9-11 reveal. The barbarians thought America was weak and attacked viciously.
Such dubious accomplishments are never worthy of any quality international organization. Destroying a long-standing alliance with the United States definitely qualifies as a 'dubious achievment'. Democracy's days in Europe may be numbered as a result of all this too--the EU has better things to attend to, it says (like Islam).
Should the EU vamoose as it should, no loss. None at all.
Posted by: pythagoras at July 24, 2007 10:55 PMMost, but not all, of what Fjordman says about the EU is factually correct - although often factually incomplete. When reading this article one should bear in mind that Fjordman has his own agenda. As he has shown in the past he has a belief in extreme free-market philosophies and one gets the impression that Fjordman uses this site in order to advance these philosophies rather than advancing the reasoning of anti-Jihad as expressed by Mr. Spencer - it could justifiably be said that he, Fjordman, advances his extremely right-wing economic viewpoint behind a facade of agreeing with Mr. Spencer and by hiding behind the professed sentiments and aims of this site.
Fjordman's peculiar, very, take on the economics of Europe (half correct and half wrong) do not actually add up to coherent arguments about Islam in Europe today, but, rather, advance his own strange beliefs about monetary policy and economic activity in Europe. His amateurish efforts, as embodied in this article, to conflate European economics with Islamic efforts at domination in the EU, are sad and inaccurate. For example, Fjordman wrote "...the ... Court of Auditors refused to give a statement of assurance on the EU's $160.3 billion budget for 2004..." Quite correct, but the Court did so because the Commission could not accurately account for $3.7 billion; they could account for the $3.7 billion, but not accurately, i.e. down to the nearest one one-hundreth of a cent.
Not being able to account to that degree of accuracy may be administratively incompetent but it is hardly criminally treasonous nor is it evidence of some Islamic totalitarian plot to de-stabilise the EU through the manipulation of its tax-and-spend powers.
Statements like "That's a steep price to pay for a common currency" completely ignore the fact that only thirteen countries (yep, 13 - the euro is the currency of: Belgium, Germany, Greece, Spain, France, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Austria, Portugal, Slovenia and Finland) in the EU have adopted the common currency. Fjordman is deliberately trying to mislead you here as he does everywhere else. There are twenty-seven countries in the EU and only thirteen have adopted the common currency.
Nice try, Fjordman, but no cigar!
Again, disinformation: "Benita Ferrero-Waldner, European Commissioner for External Relations and European Neighbourhood Policy (read: Eurabian affairs)". 'Scuse me, why should I read 'Eurabian affairs'. Benita's actions and words simply don't substantiate Fjordman's viewpoint - Google them if you don't believe me: you'll find a lot at http://ec.europa.eu/commission_barroso/ferrero-waldner/speeches/index_en.htm .
"The EU in 2007 made incitement to racism and xenophobia a crime across the 27-nation bloc". Uh, 'scuse me. No! All the national parliaments examined this proposal, for that's all it was, from the centre and formulated their own national laws. Disinformation, Fjordman. Good try, but again no cigar or Turkish cigarette!
"Former Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovksy fears that the European Union is on its way to becoming another Soviet Union. In a speech, he called the EU a "monster" that must be destroyed: "The sooner we finish with the EU the better. The sooner it collapses the less damage it will have done to us" ..." Exactly! Russia fears the EU - and so it should - but that is hardly a reason why we should give up, is it? Oh, sorry, Fjordman, you absolutely loves the anti-democratic moves of President Putin; I forgot that for just a moment. We mustn't give in to Islam but we must do as Russia says!
Come on, Fjordman, be honest here. There are thousands of reasons why one should be suspicious of the EU but your stupidities of reason and illogicalities of thought are not amongst them! Stop using this jihadwatch website to advance your personal, and in my opinion childish, political and economic viewpoints. We can all see through your rather clumsy hi-jacking attempt.
Pity that Mr. Spencer can't!
Posted by: Jonathan Ralbrooke at July 25, 2007 1:00 AM"If losing a bit of democracy is the price we pay for having a strong EU then I believe most Europeans wouldn't mind one bit."
Posted by: BlowHammed
Wrong! Oh so very wrong! Of course we would and should mind.
Democracy is absolute and indivisible. The Founding Fathers of the USA had it right. Back then they were Europeans who happened to live in America but they summed up all our thoughts and aspirations about freedom in an exceedingly clever document called the Constitution of the United States (or somesuch - please give me the correct name) and most of us find the sentiments therein are admirable even today.
No, BlowHammed. Take away even one small piece of my freedom and we are all the less for it. I will not willingly surrender my freedom in order to be free of those who might attack me for having freedom. There is no logic in so doing. Only by enjoying the absolute freedom to determine for myself the limits and boundaries of my own freedom am I absolutely free. The moment that I give up that right in order to be physically protected is the moment that I yield to feudalism - a failed and rejected system which we have outgrown.
No trade-off is possible no matter how messy or risky freedom might turn out to be. If we sacrifice even one iota of our freedom in order to be physically safe then it is my opinion that we do not deserve to be free. Freedom is absolute - and absolutely messy and difficult to deal with. But the moment you deny sombody's freedom then you deny your own freedom.
Our ancestors fought for our freedoms. We must not squander what they paid for.
Posted by: Jonathan Ralbrooke at July 25, 2007 2:04 AMAt the very least, demonstrators should carry banners advocating abolishing the Euro-Arab Dialogue, dismantling the Euro-Mediterranean Parliamentary Assembly, the Anna Lindh Euro-Mediterranean Foundation for the Dialogue between Cultures as well as all other instruments for Euro-Mediterranean and Eurabian cooperation.
YES! But unfortunately this will not be allowed. It will be forbidden (by the organisers!) even to mention the EU on banners.
The German organiser has published on its website
http://www.akte-islam.de/21.html (translated):
"In cooperation with the Brussels police we have chosen four banners, which you can carry in one ore more European languages:
* Stop the Islamisation of Europe (SIOE)
* ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!
* NO SHARIA HERE!
* DEMOCRACY NOT THEOCRACY!
Please notice, that in agreement with the Brussels police every demonstrator who carries a banner, which is not officially authorized will be removed from the demonstration by Belgian security forces in cooperation with our own supervisors."
These are rather stupid banners. And above all: Has anyone ever heard of demonstrators choosing their banners of a range of only four given by the police?
Who are we? Dangerous terrorists who need to be supervised? Yes, I know, we are considered to be so. But I was really shocked to see, that even the organisers bow to this idea.
When I first read this, I was deeply dissappointed and even so angry, that I decided not to go there. I am not willing to attend a "show" demonstration against Islamization, which promotes in its very organisation the constraint of free speech (which is an essential if not the most essential part of Islamization).
A few days later I calmed down. I considered that I am anonymous and the organizers are not. Probably I will go there, but I am still dissapointed and sad (and yes: still angry, too ;-) )
We are not free. Even those who oppose Islamization accept unheard-of restrictions imposed to the "evil islamophobe demonstrators" in contrast to any other demonstrators regardless of what they demonstrate for or against.
And there is no possibility to name the EU.
We have been stripped off our words. Maybe we can equalize this by numbers. I hope so.
Posted by: Eisvogel at July 25, 2007 7:54 AMgambler's choice wrote:
And they also know that the "spoilt child" Americans will leave their "comfortable positions" to once again save the Europeans from the "death, starvation and complete destruction" that their non confrontational appeasement has brought them.
I fly my flag daily, and with pride. There will come a time you will wish to see it marching through your cities.
**********
Unfortunately, our ability to save them from their destruction may not be possible because the same evil forces are at work here in America, to separate and enslave us. They are making rapid progress here, clandestinely, power elitists as in the EU, in fact, all of them plotting together, and leftist useful idiots aiding the takeover by indoctrinating millions of children with multiculturalism and poltical correctness.
As in XVII c. Montenegro, hard decisions is to be made:
http://www.crsn.com/gorskivijenac/
..."Unfortunately, our ability to save them from their destruction may not be possible"....
RED
Although it would be easy to agree with you after considerinig the political correctness and multicultural climate in the country today, I still believe in this country, and honestly feel there are enough true patriots left to do the right thing at the time they are needed most. Stubborn, blind, just plain foolish? I don't know, I guess we'll see soon enough.
"Europeans are thus financing their continent's merger with, in reality colonization by, the Muslim world without their knowledge and without their consent. It must be the first time in human history where an entire continent is being culturally eradicated with bureaucratic precision. This represents perhaps the greatest betrayal in the history of Western civilization, yet is still largely ignored by the mainstream media in most Western nations."
Scary stuff. Thank you for this essay.
I am very uncomfortable about the EU. I am so uncomfortable about it that I hope Canada will disengage itself from the monarchy (and I have always loved our Queen). I don't know if my concerns are valid but I worry that somehow Canada might one day be co-opted into the EU because we are "owned" by the Crown.
Maybe my fears are groundless. I'm going to have to do some reading about this.
Posted by: Josephine at July 25, 2007 5:47 PMBat Ye'or's book "EURABIA" tends to reinforce Fjordman's view of the EU--and mine.
In theory thge EU was an excellent idea. As a matter of fact, the EU's origins are AMERICAN. The United States helped bring about the inception of the European Common Market in the early 1950s as part of the Marshall Plan. What I do not think American leaders counted on was the presence of former Nazis and Communist-collaboraters in the highest echelons of European governance. For example, the French government (to its eternal shame) enabled such WW II criminals as Hajj Amin al-Husseini to elude post WW 2 capture by the US and its allies and sent them back to the Middle East and elsewhere(!). This was the beginnings of the anti-American movement we see around the world nowadays, I am sure of it.
If the United States government had grasped the horrifying degree of treachery that its so-called western European "allies" were all-too capable of, it might have taken a different approach towards instituting the reconstruction of western Europe in the 1950s.
In essence, the EU was co-opted and subverted by totalitarian-minded people at the highest levels of European government and society. And that is why the EU has become a dhimmi state of Islam--the people running Europe for the past century have no use for democracy but it will not serve their interests to admit this openly to America--so we get the rhetorical run-around from these people instead of the truth which is that Europe has already started down the road towards institutionalized totalitarianism.
The EU and Islam: "Birds of a feather....."
Posted by: pythagoras at July 25, 2007 10:10 PMWhat a paradox. In the past, our problem has not been union, but DIS-union. Over and over, most noticeably in 1683 but on numerous prior occasions, the ferocious internecine quarrels of the different European tribes/ nations weakened them individually and rendered them unwilling to help each other fend off Muslim invasion that threatened them all.
Each time the whole squabbling lot were only saved, in the nick of time, by a few visionary leaders (Don John of Austria; Jan Sobieski) coming to help nations other than their own; or by courageous people acting almost alone. Think of Poitiers: Charles Martel , barring the gate of the Loire against the Moors, saved England and Ireland and Scandinavia, as well as France, and probably helped prepare the way, in the long term, for the Spanish Reconquista. The Knights of Malta in 1565, abandoned by Europe, fighting to hold the gate of the Mediterranean against the Turks, saved a dozen countries from dhimmitude.
And then one can go into the tragedy of the gulf between Eastern and Western Christendom which also, nearly always, prevented common action to squash the jihad. Russia, now, totally unwilling to see that the jihad monster will devour her second, even if it devours America first. Or the current betrayal of the Jews of Israel, and the total failure to support our black African Christian brethren in southern Sudan, and in Coptic Christian Ethopia which has fought off Islam for centuries. For that matter: how much help are the Catholic Filipinos receiving? Who is acting to strengthen civil society and train the army in Papua New Guinea, to warn its newly-Christianised warrior tribes about the deadly danger of Islam so near to their westward, and that they may have to fight to defend their forests, farms, and families? If the jihad invades East Timor, will Australia help the Timorese to fight them off, even though they [the Timorese] are essentially guarding our back doorstep? Not to forget the Thai and the Indians - 'western' countries should be trying to awaken hearts and give help, not turning our backs.
Division within and among non-Muslim communities, driven by selfishness and pride, has been our curse; it has always benefited the jihadists. They have always sought to foster it.
We, not just 'christendom' or 'the west' but the entire non-Muslim world - do need unity - a healthy unity - a unity that rests on celebrating all that we have in common in the midst of our linguistic and cultural differences, and on the recognition that this human treasure, all the way from Chartres in the west to Angkor Wat in the East, is mortally threatened by Islam.
Instead, we see in 'Eurabia' a dreadful unanimity of cowardice and treachery. We have the spectacle of a UNITED Europe - a Europe far more unified than in 1683 - which instead of rising up as one to withstand Islam, seems to have united only in order to submit the more abjectly.
Where is a Jan Sobieski, a Don John of Austria, a Jean de Vallette? Where is our Gandalf? Oriana Fallaci is dead. Jacques Ellul is dead. Who will take up their banner? Instead of what was once 'christendom' leading a charge of all free peoples against the jihad, the Wormtongues and the Sarumans of Europe (see Tolkien) seem intent on leading the plunge into the abyss.
In the 1920s G K Chesterton wrote "The Everlasting Man". One chapter is entitled "The Five Deaths of the Faith", and it talks about the five occasions upon which 'christendom' in Europe was pronounced dead, but refused to die. Perhaps he would call our present predicament 'the sixth death of the faith'. Those of us who are Christians had better be working and praying for a sixth arising.
Everybody - read the latest Harry Potter book, and the chapter entitled "The Battle of Hogwarts". With the unerring instinct of the poet, Rowlings senses that 'the school' (and Hogwarts is in some ways a modern visualisation of the House of the Mind in Western Christendom) is where the REAL battle is taking place. The banqueting hall set, in the films, is inspired by Kings College, Cambridge. In HER scenario, the centre of political power (the 'Ministry of Magic') falls before the centre of intellect (Hogwarts); in real life it's probably been the other way around, or simultaneous. Nevertheless - the deciding battle has to be joined at 'Hogwarts'; by analogy, in the universities and the churches, the mind and the soul of Europe. Hugh and Bat Ye'or show us just how far we have gone toward the loss of that citadel. But perhaps it is not too late.
Think of the silver-and-ruby sword of Godric Griffindor - a Crusader echo, if ever there was one. It is drawn not from a stone, but from a hat! - indicating that it acts in the realm of the intellect/ spirit; and twice over in Rowlings' epic it is used to kill a snake (lies and propaganda?). When I read Oriana Fallaci, or Spencer, or Bat Ye'or, I see the House of Griffindor, and I hear the swish of that ruby-studded sword.
Good luck to the demo in Brussels. Publicly saying "No to Sharia" IS a start in the war of words. And - maybe some groups of Christians need to be prepared to sing the Te Deum, the Gloria, the Magnificat, and ring bells, and wear crosses, because this is precisely what sharia and dhimmitude forbid to be shown in the street. Christians - wear the cross. Jews - wear the star of David. (And - Christians, be prepared to march next to your Jewish brothers and sisters; let them know that if anyone tries to harm them you will be standing in between them and the enemy).
There must be a FEW priests brave enough to ring the bells in their churches along the way, as the march goes by.
The march shouldn't just be 'against' Islam. It should be FOR Europe, FOR life, beauty, music, freedom, joy, unveiled faces, freedom to disagree, freedom to think. Think Mardi Gras. Think Feast of Fools. Italians - recite Dante! Sing a Verdi chorus! Germans - sing a Bach cantata, Wachet auf!; bring a boombox with 'Sunrise' from Haydn's Creation. English - declaim Shakespeare! French - sing Faure's Cantique de Jean Racine; perform a scene from Beaumarchais or Moliere; bring out the mime artists.
Wear your very best, your national costumes. Ladies, especially if you are French - wear the most exquisitely fashionable evening gown or day dress you can buy, beg, or borrow; exhibit in public the glory that Islam would publicly obliterate. Wear T-shirts with reproductions of major European artworks (Mona Lisa, etc). Make the march so damn interesting, such a colourful pageant, that the MSM just can't stay away.
How about a bit of allegorical street theatre featuring Europa and a sinister Saracen?
Ideally, in future there should be more demonstrations linked to cultural festivals, fairs or symposiums that celebrate Europe's intellectual, architectural, spiritual, poetic, visual beauty that would be destroyed by the victory of Islam. (Similar activities, promoting regional NON-Muslim cultural riches, could be encouraged elsewhere - e.g. India, Thailand, Philippines, South Africa).
If that sounds like too much, start small, with bookreadings or poetry recitations, even just in the private homes of the anti-jihadists. Nothing can obliterate the power of our words, the sword of Godric Griffindor. The Bible. El Cid. The Song of Roland. St Patrick's Breastplate. Dante. Chaucer. Shakespeare. Moliere. Beaumarchais. Ariosto. Cervantes. Pascal. The Cantatas of Bach. Michael Ende. H C Andersen. Churchill. De Tocqueville. Fallaci. Dickens, Chesterton, Tolkien, Rowlings.
From THIS should come our unity.
Re: Jonathan Ralbrooke
Since you don’t seem to understand the difference between Bukovsky and Putin, you are hardly qualified to make any judgment on European politics.
Posted by: yankee imp at July 26, 2007 12:29 AM
And, as a bit of " that can't happen here in the U.S.A. " other side of atlantic topic argument..
http://www.numbersusa.com/hottopic/nationalsovereignty.html
Reading this will get the American blood a bit higher in pressure.
Also, for those who vote for the president..
[D]emocracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention; have ever been found incompatible with personal security, or the rights of property; and have, in general, been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths.2 James Madison
A democracy is a volcano which conceals the fiery materials of its own destruction. These will produce an eruption and carry desolation in their way.4 The known propensity of a democracy is to licentiousness [excessive license] which the ambitious call, and ignorant believe to be liberty.5 Fisher Ames, Author of the House Language for the First Amendment
[T]he experience of all former ages had shown that of all human governments, democracy was the most unstable, fluctuating and short-lived.7 John Quincy Adams
Many Americans today seem to be unable to define the difference between the two, but there is a difference, a big difference. That difference rests in the source of authority.
A pure democracy operates by direct majority vote of the people. When an issue is to be decided, the entire population votes on it; the majority wins and rules. A republic differs in that the general population elects representatives who then pass laws to govern the nation. A democracy is the rule by majority feeling (what the Founders described as a "mobocracy" 12); a republic is rule by law. If the source of law for a democracy is the popular feeling of the people, then what is the source of law for the American republic? According to Founder Noah Webster:
[O]ur citizens should early understand that the genuine source of correct republican principles is the Bible, particularly the New Testament, or the Christian religion.
May the wise consider ..
Posted by: Islofob IS-1 at July 26, 2007 1:07 AMClever, and no doubt deliberate, misreading of what I actually wrote, yankee imp, and therefore a clever attempt to misdirect others - but not clever enough, I'm afraid.
I am fully aware of the world of difference between Bukovsky and His Excellency President Dr. Putin, which is more than you are, obviously.
My point, which you failed to take despite it being couched in the simplest of English, was about Fjordman's risible attempt to conflate Bukovsky's ridiculous assertions about the EU with some putative necessity for the abandonment of the EU by all concerned. His stupid assertion that we ought to abandon the EU because Bukovsky says so - and I added the point that His Excellency President Dr. Putin would agree with him about this - is just laughable. If, as Bukovsky asserts, Russia wants the EU to go away then that seems to me to be a very good point in favour of the continued existence of the EU (especially since the government of the USA wishes to see the EU continue to exist - I'd rather ally with the US of A than with Fjordman, who, demonstrably, doesn't know what he is talking about in this respect, and Bukovsky).
You would be well rewarded, yankee imp, by closely and slowly reading and considering my texts instead of jumping to emotional and irrational conclusions about what you thought I wrote instead of what I actually wrote.
My thesis here is quite simple and should be obvious to anyone with even a limited command of English. Simply put, it is that although Fjordman's distrust of the EU and all of its Institutions can be justified, the arguments which he advances for such a distrust in this article are pathetic, weak, risible and stupid. He does his cause no good with this article. In the past he has also failed to sensibly justify his position. I expect the rigour of logic from Fjordman and this article does not have it.
This article, and shame on Mr. Spencer for publishing it, is weak. It is carping, whining and pathetic and lacks even the saving grace of anger and indignation - not to mention originality.
Fjordman has had his day until he finds a new and more potent and urgent voice. It would also be nice if he could give his freeper instincts a rest and try for some good, old-fashioned and impassioned logic, instead.
Obviously, yankee imp, I don't expect you to see what I am driving at - people like you never do - but I felt that I had to reply to you anyway.
Posted by: Jonathan Ralbrooke at July 26, 2007 1:17 AMFjordman you are right on this time. The EU has to be eliminated, and it can only come from the root of power – the people themselves. The September 11 rally is, as someone above pointed out, a first step, Lets hope it leads to many more.
Bush’s clandestine pursuit of a North American EU is evidently modeled on the clandestine manner in which the EU grew at the elite level, out of touch with the people. Americans have yet to wake up to this subversion.
The Glossocracy article on Gates of Vienna is a great companion piece and I recommend it to anyone who has not seen it.
Wimbledon Womble, Pythagoras, Dumbledoresarmy, Islofab – great reinforcing comments.
Posted by: Jimmy Bones at July 26, 2007 4:02 AMJonathan Ralbrooke:
you sound like a yob with a severe case of fox-hunting envy. So the argument for disbanding EU is no good because Putin is for it? Hilarious. Next time try to use logic instead of falling back on epithets (risible, ridiculous, pathetic, weak, risible and stupid, carping, whining and pathetic, potent and urgent, good, old-fashioned and impassioned). Oof. Give your Roget's a break already. Thats what happens when your editor goes on vacation...
The EU would merely be a nuisance of clerks if the Islamic threat weren't pressing at its gates, and rising in its bowels.
We need to concentrate on the growing danger from militant Mohammadism and less upon the minutae of EU infra-politics, and keep the focus on the self-declared enemy of our Civilization.
We can pillory the pimps and panderers in Brussels, etc., once the war against Islamic imperialism is openly recognized as our duty to save our liberties.
And the traitors in our midst can be dealt with after the need to battle against Muslim theocratic fascism is grasped by the majority of the half-hearted on the Continent, and the delusional 49% in America.
Posted by: profitsbeard at July 26, 2007 2:09 PMprofitsbeard:
i'm afraid you can't really separate one from the other. As long as EC lets them in through the side door, there's no holding up the front.
Posted by: yankee imp at July 26, 2007 9:23 PMprofitsbeard:
I might have agreed with you were it not for the facts that the EU bureaucrats are the ones who brought the Islamic barbarian hordes into Europe this time out, were the ones who most heavily financed the jihad against the west (and were aware that they were doing just this), and are the ones who (most recently) armed Saddam and other jihad enemies of America and the west. The EU bureaucracy continues to befriend the Muslim world and shower it with Euros.
The EU even awarded that godfather of modern Islamic terrorism, Yasser Arafat, a Nobel Peace Prize!
Add to that EU leaders have become chummy with non-friends of democracy such as Vladimir Putin, the PLO, and China at the same time that democracy is on the ropes worldwide.
Posted by: pythagoras at July 26, 2007 11:21 PMPosted by Jonathan Ralbrooke:
"The Court of Auditors refused to give a statement of assurance on the EU's $160.3 billion budget for 2004..."... but the Court did so because the Commission could not accurately account for $3.7 billion; they could account for the $3.7 billion, but not accurately, i.e. down to the nearest one one-hundreth of a cent. Not being able to account to that degree of accuracy may be administratively incompetent but it is hardly criminally treasonous
On the contrary, Jonathan, directors of any organisation other than the EU that “mislaid” $3.7bn would find themselves facing trial on embezzlement charges. Does Enron ring any bells? And by the way, the following year the auditors refused yet again to OK the EU's accounts - 12 years in a row now. Don't build your hopes up for this year's audit either.
"Benita Ferrero-Waldner, European Commissioner for External Relations and European Neighbourhood Policy (read: Eurabian affairs)".'Scuse me, why should I read 'Eurabian affairs'. Benita's actions and words simply don't substantiate Fjordman's viewpoint.
No, 'scuse me. The European Neighbourhood Policy and Euromed are both very real entities. They point to the planned eventual incorporation of the countries of North Africa and the Middle East into a Greater EU - "Eurabia" in other words - and of the key rights of citizens within the EU, such as freedom of movement and freedom of residence, being extended to the people of those countries.
About five years ago, I recall a story about a map that featured at an EU exhibition, describing something called "The Union", an entity that included the countries of Europe along with those of the Mahgreb and the near Middle East. When challenged by critics alarmed by this view of an EU empire, EU officials explained that this map was not a statement of future political intent, merely its artist's personal and somewhat exaggerated vision of a pan-Mediterranean nation.
Today that same map appears on the homepage of the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership on the EU's official website
http://ec.europa.eu/external_relations/med_mideast/intro/
"The EU in 2007 made incitement to racism and xenophobia a crime across the 27-nation bloc" No! All the national parliaments examined this proposal, for that's all it was, from the centre and formulated their own national laws.
And you support this? It epitomises the the whole problem with the EU - centralised decision making by an unelected cartel ( the European Commission ) which is then rubber stamped by a tame legislature ( the European Parliament ) and then imposed upon Europe’s countries - now in reality just administrative regions of the same super state - with the imperative that they be incorporated into national law. England’s American colonies revolted for less.
"Former Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovksy fears that the European Union is on its way to becoming another Soviet Union. In a speech, he called the EU a "monster" that must be destroyed:"Exactly! Russia fears the EU - and so it should - but that is hardly a reason why we should give up, is it?…We mustn't give in to Islam but we must do as Russia says!
Vladimir Bukovsky is not “Russia”. He’s not speaking for that country, but as a dissident forcibly exiled from Russia after being held for 12 years in various prisons, gulags and psikhushkas - forced-treatment psychiatric hospitals used to imprison enemies of the state. He is warning against the EU becoming another overbearing totalitarian regime like the USSR, not speaking in favour of the country that exiled him.
Bukovsky makes his point very clear in this interview with Paul Belien at The Brussels Journal
http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/865
Posted by: Matamoros at July 27, 2007 12:08 PMMr. Ralbrooke seems to believe that the EU serves a vital function. I won't deny him this point especially as my own country the United States actually founded this economc and political entity as part of the Marshall Plan to reconstruct Europe.
HOWEVER---
The EU was co-opted along the way by ideological elements (probably including French government officials with Communist leanings who helped WW2 war criminal Hajj al-Husseini escape justice after WW2)and is presently engaged in all sorts of activities that betray its original purpose.
The EU, for example, has poured billions of Euros into the Muslim world fully aware of the deteriorating human rights situation in virtually all of them making nonsense of its so-called human right campaigns elsewhere) . Yasser Arafat's PLO was a major beneficiary of European Common Market investment and used the monies gained to finance the PLO invasion of Lebanon and massacre Maronite Christians there in a brutal jihad--the EU later awarded Mr. Arafat a Nobel Peace Prize. The EU bureaucracy continues to favor Muslim immigrants in western Europe despite widespread and frowing violence caused by these people. Anti-American propaganda continues to pour out of the EU presses in favor of unenlightened pro-Islamic spins that mislead millions of Europeans. The EU leadership apparently has little regard for democracy, arming Saddam Hussein's dictatorship and cashing in on the Oil for Food Program of the UN (which was widely known to have been a scam that was starving the Iraqi people). Gerhard Schroder went on to seek lucrative employment with Vladimir Putin's disguised dictatorship that supplied which armed the murderous jihadist government of Iran with dangerous missile technology and nuclear power plant technology.
The list goes of EU malfeasances goes on and on-- and keeps growing.
And so it may yet prove to be true that EU has a legitimate purpose to fulfill.
But at the same time, it will almost certainly prove true that the EU will not be able to fulfill its original purpose with the type of people it now has filling the ranks of its leadership.
Posted by: pythagoras at July 27, 2007 1:49 PMComments are turned off and archived for this entry.
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