Europe Is In More Danger Than at Any Time Since the 1930s. One Nationalist Demagogue Could Cause an Earthquake
TELEGRAPH BLOGS – THOMAS PASCOE: Ours is a complacent continent. Despite impending events that would have precipitated a revolution in almost any other place at almost any other time in history – either a collapse of the currency or the complete secession of budgetary control to a supra-natural body in the EU – we expect the fabric of European society to endure without major changes. I think we are wrong.

There is a presumption of perpetual peace in Europe which rests in turn on a presumption of the perpetuity of our existing capital structures. Once the latter are undermined, the former is called into question.

The great wars of the secular age have all been fought between ideologies which seek to restructure the relationship between capital and the people. As popular support grows for such plans, Western Europe is entering its most dangerous phase since the 1930s. » | Thomas Pascoe | Friday, July 13, 2012

My comment:

The cauldron bubbles away ever more ferociously. The witches and wizards of the City and political class look on. Some (the stupid ones) are gleeful because of their spoils, many more (the naïve ones) are clueless to correct the imbalances. The man in the street awaits the future with trepidation, helplessness, and anxiety. Bad times have already arrived for many; worse times are yet to come. The überrich are surely nervous, the poor are surely seething, those in the middle are, as always, complacent. But they smell trouble a-brewing. Upheaval is surely nigh. – © Mark

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No, Janet, Geert’s Film Was NOT Ugly!
Banning any discussion about the nature of the Koran just plays into the hands of bigots and demagogues, argues Janet Daley.

I had just taken part in a television discussion on the coverage of the Gaza conflict and was now paired up with the driver provided by BBC Transport to take me home. Clearly identifiable from his beard and clothing as a practising Muslim, he led me courteously to his car. On the way back, we chatted about the traffic and the weather, before we got onto the problems of minicab drivers in the recession. I sympathised with the fact that he was finding it harder and harder to make a living: even coming into central London from where he lived (he mentioned a town well known for its fundamentalist Islamic community) was no solution because it used so much petrol. Cab drivers were, I said, always among the first to suffer in financial hard times.

At various points in our exchanges, he expressed curiosity about what I had been debating on the programme and I avoided answering, sensing that the subject might be inflammatory. But finally there was a direct question: what subject had I been discussing? So I told him. And what had I said about it, he asked.

So, as tactfully as I could, I told him. Which opened the floodgates. The problem could never be resolved, he said, because it was a battle between Muslims and Jews which meant that it was between, as he put it, "good and evil". The Jews in Israel, he said, did not follow the faith of Judaism, but of another religion called "Zionism". At this point, I intervened to point out, very gently, that I was Jewish and to suggest that Judaism and Zionism were not actually mutually exclusive. The More We Discuss Religious Differences the Safer We Will Be >>> Janet Daley | Sunday, February 15, 2009

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