Showing posts with label United Europe. Show all posts
Showing posts with label United Europe. Show all posts

Saturday, March 26, 2022

Biden: America's Stability Rests upon a United Europe

Mar 26, 2022 • President Biden addressed the crisis in Ukraine during his meeting in Poland, where he said, “America’s ability to meet its role in other parts of the world rests upon a united Europe.” He said Poland has taken in over two million refugees since the invasion began, and that it should be “all of NATO’s responsibility.”

Monday, March 02, 2009

Growing Economic Crisis Threatens the Idea of One Europe

THE NEW YORK TIMES: PARIS — The leaders of the European Union gathered Sunday in Brussels in an emergency summit meeting that seemed to highlight the very worries it was designed to calm: that the world economic crisis has unleashed forces threatening to split Europe into rival camps.

An urgent call from Hungary for a large bailout for newer, Eastern members was bluntly rejected by Europe’s strongest economy, Germany, and received little support from other countries. Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, facing federal elections in September, said countries must be dealt with on a case-by-case basis.

“Saying that the situation is the same for all Central and Eastern European states, I don’t see that,” Mrs. Merkel told reporters. She spoke after Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany of Hungary warned, “We should not allow that a new Iron Curtain should be set up and divide Europe.”

With uncertain leadership and few powerful collective institutions, the European Union is struggling with the strains this crisis has inevitably produced among 27 countries with uneven levels of development.

The traditional concept of “solidarity” is being undermined by protectionist pressures in some member countries and the rigors of maintaining a common currency, the euro, for a region that has diverse economic needs. Particularly acute economic problems in some newer members that once were part of the Soviet bloc have only made matters worse. >>> By Steven Erlanger and Stephen Castle | Monday, March 2, 2009

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Tuesday, October 10, 2006

Islam: The Catalyst Europe Needs to Become United?

The unity of Europe has been, and is, the dream of many a European politician. The EU spends its time devising new ways to break down the barriers hindering integration; though often times to the annoyance of the citizens of Europe.

Now, however, we have Muslims baying for blood, and this phenomenon, if used wisely, could truly act as the catalyst that unites Europeans!

There is no doubt about it that European, and all Western, values are being undermined by the Muslims within our borders, and are under constant attack from the Muslims without, too. Again, only in the past few days, it has come to light that another furore is building because a group of young right-wingers in Denmark took part in a competition to draw more cartoons of the prophet Muhammad. Their remit: to draw him in the most degrading manner they could think of! Muhammad was drawn as a urinating camel and another drew him as an intoxicated, beer-drinking camel. Yet another cartoon shows Muhammad as a drunken terrorist attacking Copenhagen.

How shocking! How truly shocking! Or is it? Just about all other gods and religious symbols have been attacked over the years in the West; it is part of our cultural freedom, however distasteful it might be to many, especially to those outside our borders. Most people found Piss Christ by the artist Andres Serrano in 1989 to be highly offensive; but the world didn’t go up in flames over it, though, all the same.

Unfortunately, it’s a price we have to pay if we want freedom of expression, democracy, and liberty. Freedom of expression is totally and utterly indivisible. Either you have it, or you don’t. There is no such thing as partial freedom of expression. If some freedoms of expression are taken away from us, then we shall end up with no freedom of expression at all!

I dare say that the sensibilities of many Muslims have been offended. But that is no reason for our politicians to apologize for any offence caused. On the contrary, our politicians need to stick to our own values. Muslims, if allowed to do so, will take such freedoms away from us. We must not, under any circumstances, allow them to achieve their goal.

How many times could Westerners have felt offended by Muslims in recent years? They call us filthy infidels, burn our churches, behead people, kill Westerners in terrorist attacks, and much else besides. But we take these things on the chin, we take them in a mature manner. We turn the other cheek in the time-honoured tradition of the Christian. This contrast in behaviour shows the Western world’s maturity and the converse behaviour of the Islamic world.

As much as we don’t wish to offend others and their religious sensibilities, that we sometimes do so is the price that has to be paid for freedom of expression. This right is one which tens of thousands, nay millions, have died for in previous generations. This right must be defended to the hilt. As Mrs Thatcher once said to George Bush Sr: “This is no time to go all wobbly!”

We need to be firm and strong and resolute and determined, because we have our way of life, our values, and our freedoms to defend. It is also no time to apologize to all and sundry in the Islamic world. If they don’t like it, then let them lump it. If you politicians want to tell them anything, then tell them to grow up! Welcome to the real world!

There is no doubt about it that the West is under siege by Muslims worldwide. They are ‘trying it on' here, there, and everywhere. They are trying to get us to cower into submission. They want us to kow tow to them. They are also buying up our businesses and corporations, buying up our properties and land, building mosques all around the globe, building madrassahs where their religious values can be instilled into the young who are eager to be brainwashed, and they build propagation centres by the dozen to practise their da’wah, or proselytize.

They are able to afford all this, of course, because we are financing the operations through our insatiable desire for oil. Had we found and implemented a sensible replacement for this substance, their activities would have been severely curtailed through lack of funds. Alas, Western politicians have not been far-seeing enough to solve this problem.

The phase we are in here in the West at the moment is redolent of the phase I went through when I first went to work in the Arab world. When I first went to work in Saudi Arabia it was like an assault on the senses! My whole value system was turned upside down, and put out of equilibrium. Why? Because I was put into a situation in which all the values I had been raised to hold dear, all the values I had based my life on, were drawn into question. It took me several years to re-gain my equilibrium, several years to find myself again.

You see, a Muslim’s values are diametrically-opposed to our own. They do everything differently, and see everything differently. They dress differently, they write differently, they pray differently, they eat differently, they live their lives differently. In fact, their lives are totally different from ours, because their values are totally different.

When two peoples come together like this, peoples with a totally different Weltanschauung, then there are bound to be problems and clashes of values. This is what we are experiencing here in the West today. We saw it with the original cartoon furore earlier this year, we saw it with the Pope’s lecture at Regensburg, and we have seen it recently in the States when a company used the term jihad in a car sales campaign. In the past few days, we are seeing it again with a replay of the cartoon fiasco in Denmark.

Fellow Europeans! It is time to unite! It is time to come together and defend our values. We have a golden opportunity to finally show that we are truly one people! We must not tolerate the excesses of these backward people. We must be firm, we must stand united, we must be resolute, and we must take this opportunity for all European countries to work together in unison. We must put aside our petty differences, for petty they truly are. Instead of seeing our small differences, we must all work together to defeat the common enemy, to defeat this assault on our superior way of life, a way of life which guarantees rights to all people, regardless of colour, creed, sex, sexual orientation, and so on and so forth. Islam offers none of these things. It is truly a backward political system (clothed in a deity) for the mediæval mindset. There should be no place for this backward thinking in Europe. We are already far too advanced to be taken back to a bygone age.

Hold firm! Be confident! Be determined! Be resolute! Be sure of your own superiority! Europe is based on a Judeo-Christian culture. We must be proud of that heritage, for that heritage allows all of us, Christians, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, atheists, agnostics, and even Muslims rights which so many in many backward countries can only dream of.

We must not allow Muslims to succeed in their quest to take our freedoms away from us; and we must not allow Muslims to drive a wedge between us and the United States of America, our greatest and most dependable ally. We need America; and America needs us. We must remember this at all times; and we must endeavour to co-operate with each other. For united we stand, but divided we shall surely fall!

©Mark Alexander

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