Somehow, I missed this juicy bit of epicurean news...

Oh dear... what does this say about Europe's disdain of the golden arches?

Europe is McDonald's biggest region by revenue, generating 42 percent of sales in the first quarter and 39 percent of operating profit. The U.S. generated 47 percent of profit.

Tags: McDonald's Europe fast-food

"New" Europe versus "Old" Europe...

Der Spiegel's analysis on the ripples from the Russo-Georgia war and "New" Europe's solidarity with Georgia:

The sight gave hope to Georgians and credibility to their embattled president, Mikhail Saakashvili. On Tuesday, five heads of state from nations once controlled by the Soviet Union -- Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Ukraine and Poland -- arrived at a rally in Tbilisi to rebuke Russia for its invasion of the Caucasian country.

For French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who was engaged in frantic shuttle diplomacy between Moscow and Tbilisi to bring an end to the conflict, Tuesday's visit was badly timed. More than anything, it highlighted deep divisions within the European Union over how to deal with Russia. Since it expanded into Central Europe and parts of the former Soviet Union in 2004, Poland and the Baltic states have pushed the EU to take a stronger stance against Russia -- to the dismay of many diplomats in what some call "Old Europe."

Read the entire article.

Tags: Russo-Georgia war Poland New Europe ____

Austria, Fritzl and Evil.

À propos the post below, here's an interesting article written by the perspicacious Theodore Dalrymple, that addresses the issue of knowledge of neighbor and wife alike regarding the horrors the Fritzl children and grandchildren experienced:

It was inevitable, I suppose, that the ignorance both of Frau Fritzl and of the townspeople of the evil taking place under the very eyes, as it were, or in the midst of their placid, well-ordered and comfortable existence, should have been taken as a real-life metaphor for Austria’s attitude to its own past: for, in fact, no one really believes in his heart that either Frau Fritzl or the people of Amstetten could have been genuinely and totally ignorant of what had been going there on for so long. No, they both knew and did not know, or rather chose not to know: and choosing not to know something implies a degree of knowledge of it. Their ignorance, if such it can be called, of Herr Fritzl and his cellar was culpable.

Tags: Austria Fritzl incest

Beyond cruelty...

"I miss my sister. I'm happy about freedom and my family. I like the sun, the fresh air and nature."

Tags: Fritzl incest Austria

Interview by Swiss newspaper Junge Freiheit of American historian Victor Davis Hanson on the future with Europe... here's a sample:

JF: Is there a corresponding bias against Europeans in American society? How come nobody has ever thought to diagnose such a sentiment? Is it truly non-existent, or is it just that Americans are too wise, and Europeans too cowardly to mention it?

VDH: There has always been skepticism of Europe as a class-bound, hopelessly aristocratic static society, warped by Old World factionalism, and prone to dangerously wide springs between totalitarian fascism and totalitarian Marxism. Few note such suspicions of ours, since we are self-obsessed within our borders, and don’t translate these musings into some driving ideology. Nor do we feel that Europe per se affects our lives to any great degree, despite our ubiquitous Western heritage that we owe to Europe and the billions of U.S. dollars that are held by European governments.

The irony is that while Europeans periodically chest-pound and loudly vie with each other in hating the United States for various alleged sins (fill in the blanks from global warming to Iraq), slowly, insidiously we in the U.S. are drifting away from Europe, whether defined by commitments to its security (I doubt we would intervene again in the Balkans) to sort of a popular weariness. One article in Le Monde or a quip by a Chirac or Schroeder might pass over the heads of those in Iowa or Nebraska, but not a few hundred of these per day. So the Europeans have done the almost impossible: alienated a Western powerful ally, that kept it safe and free for the majority of the 20th century.

Tags: Junge Freiheit Future with Europe

A satirist gets serious and...

and writes to Europeans:

The assassination of Benazir Bhutto has put on notice the leaders of every European nation.

Your secularism, your democracy will not stand. The growing Muslim populations in your own lands that you have done so much to tolerate, protect and celebrate, will soon rise up against you. Sharia law shall become your law. The Caliph shall rule you.

It remains only for you to choose submission or assassination.

Via LGF.
Bhutto Pakistan

Mohammed is set to overtake Jack as the most popular boys' name...

"...in Britain as a result of the high birth rate in Muslim families, which is driving the British population to a record high." Source: The Telegraph.

Mohammed Jack

"One of Europe's biggest real-estate transfers in history".

demographics

Western Europe's remarkable transformation.

"...what if ...the border comes to you? Not explicitly, but in a kind of demographic equivalent to the overlaid area codes of a North American metropolis. Amsterdam is the city of legalized pot and prostitution and a gay hedonist paradise. But it's also a Muslim city, overlaid on the pothead playground. At what point does the nice Dutch gay couple realize they've crossed a border? That, without getting their passports stamped or changing their currency, they're now strangers in a strange land."

Read all of Mark Steyn's article.

multiculturalism Netherlands Islam

European women drawn to Texas death row inmates.

"Imagine how hard it is to be a European man, pining away with unrequited love for a woman who is obsessed with some child rapist locked up in a Texas clink. Even I feel sorry for that guy."

death row inmates Texas

Germany: A society without children is a society without a future.

Read the article in the Weekly Standard written by Steven Ozment, professor of history at Harvard, about Germany's plight.

In Denmark, France, the Netherlands, and Germany, native birth rates barely leave a single offspring behind to replace its two parents. As a result, large and growing numbers of foreign workers--predominately Bosnian, Turkish, and African Muslims--have immigrated to Western Europe to work the vacant, or unwanted, jobs native Europeans now lack the manpower to fill. The economic and social costs of European reluctance to be "fruitful and multiply," as the Bible puts it, are high and going higher for Europeans. Denmark's immigrant population is only 5 percent Muslim, yet that 5 percent receives 40 percent of the state welfare budget, and those families are just beginning to grow.

The civic and political costs promise to become even more frightening as immigrant populations
grow unchecked and assimilation to European languages and culture remains partial and increasingly tactical. Should there be successful Muslim proselytizing among German youth--many of whom do not share their elders' flight from the traditional family, religion, and work ethic--Germany could become, religiously if not yet politically, a mixed Muslim state within a quarter-century.

In Germany's large Muslim communities, speaking German and mastering the German Basic Law are proving to be effective tools not only for immigrant assimilation to German culture, but also for the ascendancy of immigrant culture over German. With the continuing growth of these communities, and the construction of mammoth mosques within them, will come increasing demands by the inhabitants to govern by sharia law rather than by German Basic Law.

One might have expected that Germans, who have been historically Europe's most theologically literate people, would have rediscovered and reembraced the lessons and resources of their own Catholic and Protestant heritage in coming to terms with European Islam. The misdeeds and shortcomings of those Christian churches in the 20th century do not merit their present oblivion. This is especially true in light of Christianity's vital historical contributions to European law, culture, and polity, without which Germans might still today be wandering across Germania in search of an Arminius.

Despite some countervailing evangelical straws in the wind, Germans today have hardened their agnosticism and atheism against established religion, apparently believing, counterintuitively, that the sermons of Luther and Bonhöffer are a less mighty fortress against Germany's gnawing problems (low native birth rates and bleak existentialism) than the old tin drums of Günter Grass and Jürgen Habermas. It is a good German question to ask today: Which of the two are more likely to assist new mothers with child-care and child-rearing and keep Germans' sunny-side up?

A year and a half ago, in a gripping interview with Die Zeit, Matthias Platzeck, Franz Müntefering's successor as Social Democratic party chairman, complained about the large numbers of Germans who no longer believe in the traditional German family, religion, and work ethic. One need only count late-20th-century Germany's historically low birth rates, scant church attendance, and mini-work-weeks with early retirement and cushy pensions, to see the gravity of Platzeck's complaint.

Germany demographics traditional German family Christianity Islam

Amsterdam "youths" riots...

Check out Klein Verzet for an update on the car burnings in Amsterdam. It has been 6 nights already...

When the French "youths" rioted and burnt cars in Paris, it seemed we all paid more attention to this. I think, like everything else, we are becoming too accustomed to these incidents, and do not react with the outrage we once had.

Amsterdam Dutch police

Ethnic Swedish ...

converts to Islam. There are about 5,000 of them, many female:

Imaan Granath, another Swedish woman who converted to Islam, says that people "have to look at Islam from a non-Arab perspective." Granath’s story started with her fascination with the tale of Aladdin:“I’ve always been interested in different cultures, I loved travelling and loved learning languages. When I was a kid I used to dress up as an Arab princess - and I still do."

Swedish converts to Islam religion Sweden Islam

EU demographics.

"There are currently more elderly people than children living in the EU, as Europe's young population has decreased by 21 percent - or 23 million -- in 25 years, 10 percent of which in the last ten years alone. ... Despite these figures, the EU population has grown by 8.2% over the last 27 years, now reaching almost 500 million. This paradox can mostly be explained by an ever increasing number of immigrants coming to the EU. Last year alone, 75% of the population growth was the result of immigration flows, says the report." Read the whole article.

Europe demographics dying Europe immigration

Europe and Christianity:

Patriarch ALEXY II, the Head of the Russian Orthodox Church, addressed the Council of Europe for the very first time. Here's an excerpt:

The European Continent has been influenced by many cultures that are present here until now. Yet it was within Christian system that the vision of human person’s high dignity and of the conditions necessary for its realization were shaped. The Christian faith taught all nations that human beings are created in the image and likeness of God. Christianity has always stressed that if human being lives a moral live he or she may become God’s friend (cf. John 15.15) and achieve freedom (cf. John 8.32).

Every honest specialist in European history may witness that the Christian attitude to human person destroyed and condemned slavery, formed means of fair judgment, created high social and political standards of life, shaped ethical relations between persons, and developed science and culture. The very conception of human rights, Europe’s main political idea, has developed not without some influence of Christian teaching of dignity, freedom, and moral character of human being. From the very beginning human rights developed in the context of Christian morality forming with it a kind of tandem.

Yet today there occurs a break between human rights and morality, and this break threatens the European civilization. We can see it in a new generation of rights that contradict morality, and in how human rights are used to justify immoral behavior. In this connection, I may note that morality, with which any human right advocacy has to count, is mentioned in the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms. I am convinced that the makers of the European Convention on Human Rights included therein morality not as something ambiguous but rather as an integral element of the whole human rights system.

If we ignore moral norms, we ultimately ignore freedom too. Morality is freedom in action. It is a freedom brought into reality as a result of responsible choice, in which human person restricts his or her self for the good of that very person and broader society. Moral principles secure societal vitality and growth, as well as unity of society, which is one of primary objectives of the European Convention on Human Rights. And whenever moral norms are trespassed and declared to be relative, it may undermine the whole worldview of the Europeans. They may draw nigh to a disastrous moment when European nations risk losing their spiritual and cultural identity and ultimately their own place in history.

Responding to British Liberal Democrat council member David Russell-Johnston, who demanded an explanation of the Russian Orthodox leader's opposition to the Moscow "gay pride" march: "we Orthodox Christians cannot depart from what is taught by the Bible and by the apostolic tradition of the church," he added. "Nobody must try to force me or my brothers and sisters in faith to be silent and [to prevent us from] using the word sin for something that is called sin in God's Word."


Russian Orthodox Church Patriarch Alexy II Europe Christianity Council of Europe

In Britain:

"More than half of all new jobs have gone to foreigners since Labour came to power."

Source: The Telegraph

UK labor jobs

Iran's German enablers?

From Opinion Journal:

Why...the German obstructionism on efforts to contain a nuclear Iran? Business interests, of course, offer one explanation. Last year, German exports to Iran totaled about $5 billion. Though German trade with Iran has reportedly dropped this year by 20%, some 5,000 German companies--including major corporations like BASF, Siemens, Mercedes and Volkswagen--continue to do business in Tehran. As Michael Tockuss, former president of the German-Iranian Chamber of Commerce in Tehran, boasted last year, "Some two-thirds of Iranian industry relies on German engineering products."
...
Still, however substantial, business interests alone can't explain Germany's refusal to seriously confront the Iranian threat. The men and women I met in Berlin are obviously concerned about the stability of the Middle East and the safety of the Jewish state, and recognize that a nuclear-armed and expansionist Shiite regime is a danger, ultimately, to Europe as well.

Perhaps another reason for German blindness on Iran is a misplaced sense of contrition. In insisting on engagement rather than confrontation with Tehran, Germans seem to believe they are keeping faith with the lessons of their history. All problems should be peacefully resolved; no aggressor is irredeemable. That was the message offered last week by German Foreign Ministry spokesman Martin Jaeger, who, even as he insisted that Germany was ready "if necessary" to confront Iran, quickly added that Berlin was prepared to give the Ahmadinejad regime "a chance to recover the international community's lost confidence in its nuclear program. If Iran is ready to do this . then I think we can spare ourselves future sanctions debates."

global war on terror Iran Germany nonproliferation

The Hezbollah crocodile.

As Winston Churchill observed, "An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last." The Hezbollah crocodile has eaten half of Leb­anon and has laid dangerous eggs around the world. The EU must take proactive action, not wait for these eggs to hatch.

Read James Phillips' exhaustive report on Hezbollah and its threat to the EU.

global war on terror Islam Hezbollah Lebanon terrorism European Union

Isalm in Europe: the new Marxism.

Theodore Darlymple's take on what's happening in Europe: "...Islam is fast becoming the Marxism of our times. Had Fritz G. and Daniel S. grown up a generation earlier, they would have become members of the Baader-Meinhof Gang rather than Islamic extremists. The dictatorship of the proletariat, it seems, has given way before the establishment of the Caliphate as the transcendent answer to some German youths’ personal angst."


global war on terror Islam German jihadists jihad terrorism Europe marxism

Terror camps and the law.

From Der Spiegel: "German Justice Minister Brigitte Zypries has proposed making a stay in a terrorist training camp a crime -- but only if there is a concrete plan to carry out an attack. German commentators says the draft law is next to useless."

global war on terror Islam German jihadists jihad terrorism