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The emerging 'Eurabia'
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Even though we understand that Old Europe's opposition to the US over Iraq is rooted... [Read More]
Tracked on February 20, 2005 12:53 AM
Comments
1
.
BobW
said:
"There is nothing new beneath the sun" Ecclesiastes 1:9
A sales pitch for this new book should mention it's an abridged version of the subject. Some things were probably left out or listed in an appendix as "unknown". The Suez Canal and planned Berlin to Bagdad railway hints that parts of Arabie were once European territory. Algeria was a Department, or Province, of France; not a colony. Even today, the Brits maintain "sovereign" areas in Cyprus.
Along comes Bat Ye'or with another morality play packaged as international relations. This Oberammergau scare story omits the US counterparts to EAD. Saudi Arabian financial transactions with the US Government have unique arrangements no less than EAD has "structural undrpinnings". The Persian Gulf is still more American than European. To build ships to compete with the US requires work weeks longer than 35 hours and payrolls much smaller. So far, EAD is academic exercises coupled to 5 star restaurants. With the EU's 2 engines in default on the Stability Pact, the Euro is finished, along with the EU, a member of the EAD.
It cannot be said in public but many of the Arab governments know threats to their existence come from other Arab governments and not from Israel or the US. Bat Ye'or uses Western philosophies for a situation very different. Her Egypt has a government praising in secret the destruction of Iraq's French provided nuclear reactor. It is impolite to mention in public the colonial experience of the Arabs.
As recently as 1990, the Arab League moved its Headquarters from Tunesia back to Cairo. Is the United States not involved in this? Just follow the money. Half the Arab population lives in Egypt.
There is definitely a "global alternative to American power". It will not be found in Cairo or Dubai or Damascus even if linked to Paris or Berlin or Moscow. Varnished over is Europe's declining population. Shellac is coated all over Egypt's unsupportable overpopulation. Egypt's government could collapse without US financial support. Can the EU serve as a replacement protecting power?
The "structural and theoretical underpinnings to a Euro-Arab axis" must also address the structural underpinnings of the US presence in the area. The US supports Israel via bases in Italy and Spain, European nations. Another US structural underpinning are the oil trade routes. Note that 1 of the indirect toll booths on the route is Diego Garcia, a US run British colony. Britain is a European nation.
In her office, French Minister of Defense Michael Alliot-Marie has large portraits of France's warrior heros. Charles Martel defeated the Arabs. Under current trends, Anglo-Slavic Europe is disappearing because of declining births. Trends also plot out a disintergrating Arab world because of too many young people without the job creation or necessary wealth to maintain political stability.
EAD is only a peripheral concern to Israel's survival. It's like blaming Israel's current disestablishment on the positioning of the Jovian moons Europa and Ganymede. Israel also has a declining birthrate among its Jewish population.
To blame alliances, "theoretical underpinnings", the Arab League and the EAD on Israel's demise is to reject Jewish cosmology.
A closer look is needed. Look inward.
Kol tuv,
BobW
Posted by: BobW on February 19, 2005 02:59 AM
2
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RB
said:
It makes me sick of reading time and again about “Nazis being far and extreme right”. When writing folk, thinking they are conservative, will learn and understand that Hitler stood at the head of Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei (NSDAP). That means National Socialist German Workers Party.
The “gold pen” of American conservative thinking Daniel Pies writes in his last piece “Anti-Semitism Evolves”:
"* From right to left: For centuries, anti-Semitism was the hallmark of the right and merely episodic on the left. To take the ultimate examples of these trends, Stalin's Judeophobia was peripheral to his monstrous project, but Hitler's was central to his."
http://www.danielpipes.org/article/2412
What is in my opinion more meaningful and disturbing that in the following comments on this article (coming mainly from politically right leaning people) only one reader responds:
"Submitted by Mark, February 15, 2005 at 08:54
If you are linking Hitler and the Nazis to a party on the right, i.e. conservative, then this is a mistaken impression. The Nazi Party was a S-O-C-I-A-L-I-S-T party and was called The Nationalist Socialists Workers Party. I have never known a socialist party to be a conservative party on the right! So Hitler and Stalin were both leftists; Hitler's "disagreement" with Russia/Stalin was what kind of socialism should be followed. And lest we forget "Il Duce" - Mussolini; he was a soocialist also. Fascism is another form of socialism and not a conservative philosophy; Mussolini proudly defined fascism as socialism when queried about fascism."
I would also ask what Daniel Pipes thinks about Karl Marks being not “extremely right” but extremely anti-Semitic. And about Stalin dying just prematurely to fulfill his great plans about Soviet Jewry.
It is time to comprehend that the great part of society disorders are start with mind disorder of intellectuals (including ones on the Right).
Posted by: RB on February 19, 2005 04:39 AM
3
.
Per
said:
"I say the reporter is holding the New York Times' broader, moderate readership hostage. The facts shall set you free in Bat Ye'or's "Eurabia."
Perhaps someone should think of publishing a note on the spectre of Amerabia?
Posted by: Per on February 19, 2005 06:15 PM
The emerging 'Eurabia'
By Diana West, The Washington Times
It was just a coincidence that "Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis" appeared in the mail the same day a New York Times article on the subject of Eurabia landed on the doorstep. "Eurabia," the long-awaited book by Bat Ye'or, is a comprehensive, even overwhelming and absolutely shocking explication of how and why it is that Europe is transforming itself into what the Egyptian-born historian calls "a new geopolitical entity " Eurabia." The New York Times article, on the other hand, a muddled analysis by Craig S. Smith about the "fear of Islamists" and the "far right" in Belgium, is one more illustration of how desperately Bat Ye'or's trail-blazing work is needed.
Few of us have the long-view vision to make sense of the sweep of history as it smokes past our eyes; Bat Ye'or, as a historian of Islam, and, in particular, the dhimmi (the non-Muslim peoples who live as second-class citizens under Islamic rule), has precisely the laser-lens required. She also has the fortitude of the historian/gumshoe to wade through the stacks of articles, memoranda and conference declarations generated by something called the Euro-Arab Dialogue (EAD).
Created 30-odd years ago at the instigation of France and the Arab League, the practically unknown EAD has provided structural and theoretical underpinnings to a Euro-Arab axis " Eurabia. These have fostered the political, economic and cultural bonds between Europe and the Arab world that Bat Ye'or maintains were designed to create "a global alternative to American power."
How? Very basically " and this is detailed in the book " by shepherding a meeting of Euro-Arab minds, first and foremost, on the Arab League war on Israel. This would come about in exchange for freely flowing Arab oil into Europe, which would come about in exchange for freely flowing Muslim immigration into Europe, which would come about in exchange for research and development and labor and education and tourism and cultural ties between the Europe and the Arab world... which would all come about with an increasing independence of, and, indeed, hostility toward America.
This goes a long way toward explaining the behavior of Old Europe " the heart of Eurabia " since September 11. It also leaves a question hanging when the New York Times pegs Muslim immigration into Europe to a simple "postwar labor shortage": Is that really all the news that's fit to print?
Trying to assess the rise of the anti-immigration party Vlaams Belang, which represents almost a quarter of the Belgian electorate today, the New York Times reporter seems perplexed. This is how I think he thinks: To be anti-immigration is to be, as he puts it, "far right" or "extreme right." And to be "far right" or "extreme right" is to be very, very bad. Weren't Nazis both far and extreme right " or is that the Republican Party? Whatever.
He knows Islam is a religion, although he doesn't seem to know it is also a political system. And to be prejudiced against religiosity (but not Christianity or Zionism) is very, very bad also. So, Mr. Smith writes: "Many people" " himself, for instance?" " "worry that the appeal of anti-Islamic politics will continue to spread as the European Muslim population grows." No mention, of course, that to be "anti-Islamic politics" is to be anti-sharia law, which sounds perfectly Jeffersonian to me.
This, however, is beyond a guy who marvels " again, perplexed " that one of his interviewees, a son and grandson of Holocaust victims, has campaigned for "far right" Vlaams Belang. The poisonous animus for Jews (and Christians) contained within "Islamic politics," not to mention its totalitarian strictures, fails to move the reporter's silly sense of political direction. His compass tells him anti-immigrationists are on the "far right" (jackboots), while Muslims, he writes, join "left-leaning parties" (save the whales).
Then Mr. Smith interviews a Belgian Muslim whose son faces terror charges in Turkey for killing 61 people in a 2003 bombing, and who calls the September 11 attacks "a poetic act." In his, I suppose, "left-leaning" way, terror-dad "dismisses the far right's fears of an Islamization of Europe, even if he does dream of an Islamic theocracy governing the continent someday." Mr. Smith's conclusion? "In many ways, radical Islamists" " such as terror-dad " are holding Europe's broader, moderate Muslim population hostage, attracting attention disproportionate to their numbers."
I say the reporter is holding the New York Times' broader, moderate readership hostage. The facts shall set you free in Bat Ye'or's "Eurabia."
Posted by Ted Belman at February 18, 2005 11:13 PM