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Last month, the EU's counterterror czar said "a real threat is developing at our borders" with respect to jihadist activity in North Africa. No problem: Just cut back on the borders. That'll solve it.
Eurabia Alert. "Mideast conflict must not hinder Med Union-Sarkozy," from Reuters:
TUNIS, April 30 (Reuters) - French President Nicolas Sarkozy said on Wednesday the Israeli-Palestinian conflict must not be allowed to obstruct his planned Union for the Mediterranean, which he said would "change the world".
Sarkozy aims to launch the new grouping of 27 European Union countries and their southern neighbours in Paris on July 13.
He was forced to scale back plans for a full EU-style "Mediterranean Union" after fierce resistance from Germany, which feared it would split the EU and siphon off common funds.
Last month, EU leaders agreed to a limited form of union involving a regular summit between EU and Mediterranean leaders, with a joint presidency and a small secretariat.
Syria, Libya and some other Arab countries also appear lukewarm over the project as it might suggest an indirect normalisation of their relations with Israel without any settlement of the Palestinian conflict.
"I know that, inside the project of the Union for the Mediterranean, there is the issue of Israel and the issue of Palestine," Sarkozy said.
"I'm fully aware that all this is in the background ... but this should not stop us acting. It should encourage us to act."
He was addressing university students at the end of a three-day visit to Tunisia to boost cooperation on trade, nuclear energy and migration between the two countries.
"Failure ... would mean taking a terrible responsibility towards our children and all future generations," said Sarkozy, adding that the new Union "will change the world".
He dismissed fears that the plan would tie EU states into an unwanted political corset, saying the new grouping would allow some states to work closely together and others to stay on the sidelines.
"Everyone should stay calm. No one is imposing anything," he said.
Hold that thought...
Posted by Marisol at May 1, 2008 5:59 PM
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Wouldn't be a bad deal if it would force the muslim mafia to treat Israel and the Jews as real people.
Imagine them being forced to have dinner together with the Jooos once a month (with the appropriate hugs and kisses on the cheek)! Or having to allow an Israeli embassy and consulates in their countries! Or having to recognize Israel's Olympic athletes!
The possibilities are endless...
Posted by: PersonOfTheBook![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.jihadwatch.org/dhimmiwatch/nav-commenters.gif)
at May 1, 2008 6:15 PM
Sarkozy is way too flakey for my taste.
I don't trust him one bit.
at May 1, 2008 6:48 PM
Tell me its a nightmare and it will be OK when I wake up.
Posted by: Fred at May 1, 2008 7:05 PM
I thought Sarkozy was supposed to protect France from the Mohammedans, unlike his socialist opponent - what was her name, I forget?
Posted by: darcy at May 1, 2008 7:13 PM
Sarkozy is a traitor, like the overwhelming majority of EUrabian politicians. It will take a Revolution to shift these appeasers out of the way before normal decent Europeans can counter the Jihad which is currently simmering in cities throughout this doomed continent.
Posted by: sul3j at May 1, 2008 7:36 PM
"change the world"
You can bet your bippy on that!
Europe - new spelling - Your Rope, with which to hang yourselves.
Posted by: Pelayo at May 1, 2008 8:40 PM
Pelayo,
Europe - new spelling - Your Rope, with which to hang yourselves.
A most excellent observation! If our friend Sarkozy gets his wish, then Europe is finished!
Posted by: boneshack at May 1, 2008 10:40 PM
Centuries of struggle and courage and blind groping toward justice freedom and human rights. A war to crush the Nazis and then the decades of Soviet infiltration lies and threat till they too collapsed of their own 'historical inevitability'.
And these Fourth Rate Clowns give it ALL AWAY for... well for... no particular reason....
Posted by: poetcomic1 at May 1, 2008 10:45 PM
The Mediterranean Union will be a great new geo-political construct. Someday the Christian Western part will be endearingly named by the Caliphate and will be publicly known as the Greater Republic of Algeria.
Posted by: David England at May 1, 2008 10:52 PM
More Islam means less Europe.
Somebody should read the damned Koran in the EU.
Or their own history ...the Conquest of Spain by North African Mohammedans; The Song of Roland; the Battle of Lepanto; the Siege of Vienna in 1683, ad nauseam.
Have a croissant, Sarko.
Or a bagel.
Posted by: profitsbeard at May 1, 2008 11:31 PM
Let the dominoes begin to fall..."YourRope" has a ominous ring to it, Pelayo; a rope ring around YourRope's collar!
Looks like we're going to have go "Over There" again one of these days and straighten things out like we had to do in WWI and WWII! Why couldn't I be young enough to play with all those new toys the GI's will have in the next war to end all wars? An all out shooting war against the jihadists that Pearl Harbor'd the World Trade Center's Twin Towers... talk about an old soldier's wet dream come true!
Posted by: PatrickHenry at May 2, 2008 12:42 AM
So much for Sarcrazy
Posted by: lonewolf at May 2, 2008 12:46 AM
"French President Nicolas Sarkozy said on Wednesday the Israeli-Palestinian conflict must not be allowed to obstruct his planned Union for the Mediterranean, which he said would 'change the world.'"
-- from the article above
Excitable, impetuous, he turns out to be the man for the matter at hand. Philippe de Villiers was the man, but he was not in the running. Possibly there is someone else, now waiting in the wings. Sarkozy admires, and is sentimental about, Rachida Dati, his Cabient minister. He forgets that this obviously Muslim-for-identification-purposes-only Muslimah is one of eleven children, and he forgets that she is the exception, the other ten the grim rule. He can't count, and he can't think, but he can be sentimental about the exceptional Muslims, who are not a guide to state policy, or immigration policy, and he hopes, hopes, hopes that if the French government pays for mosques, instead of the Saudis, then the "problem" will go away, and Muslims can be integrated. He appears to think that it is not the Qur'an, Hadith, and Sira, that are the problem, but only those bad old Wahhabi-financed imams, or other "extremists." In short, he's a lot like Bush in Iraq, continuing to ignore the real nature of Islam.
This "Mediterranean Union" is dangerous, if it leads to the nations on the northern littoral to become ever-more tightly bound to the Muslim nations on the southern littoral, and to become afraid, for fear of offending new "partners" in that soi-disant "Union," by limiting or, better, completely halting all Muslim immigration to France and other Infidel states that are rapidly being overwhelmed and transformed demographically. The Mediterranean should be seen not as a bridge, as Sarkozy wants it to be, but as a moat -- a moat made deeper, and wider, and moatier, every day. For the sake of self-defense.
He, Sarkozy, the great hope, turns out to be offering merely a variant of deux-rivisme.
What's Deux-Rivisme, you might well ask. Well, since you might well ask, here's an article put up two years ago on the subject:
Fitzgerald: The errors of the deux-rivistes
"…still did not fully understand the complexities of the Mediterranean." -- from this article, describing Josep Borrell, president of the European Parliament
Perhaps Josep Borrell can begin to understand the complexities of the Mediterranean starting with the following:
In France successive governments over the past 35 years thought that France, and through France Europe, could be strengthened, could become a counterweight to mighty America, if there were some kind of alliance with the newly-rich and therefore newly-powerful (so it was felt) Arabs. They believed in the policy of "Deux-Rivisme," in which both banks (rives) of the Mediterranean would be seen to have much in common, with the only thing dividing them of importance being the Mediterranean itself. In other words, a feature of geography, and not much more, divided France from, say, Algeria.
That was the theory. On that theory, the French allowed millions of Algerians, and large numbers of Moroccans and Tunisians, to settle within Metropolitan France. The promoters of this policy never thought to ask themselves what Islam was all about, even as millions of Muslims made their taciturn way into France. Of course they were there for economic reasons. Of course it was easy for the French to assume, without more, that these Muslim Arabs would in the end integrate into society, just the way the Portuguese immigrants in the 1950s had, or the Vietnamese immigrants. It was not to be. The strength of the belief-system of Islam, which works against integration, works against acceptance of Infidel neighbors and against loyalty to the institutions of the Infidel nation-state, its laws, its customs, its understandings. But this was not made clear to the rulers by those they counted on for advice. A case of criminal negligence, at all levels of government.
Yet these deux-rivistes are still in power, and it is they who danced to the Arab tune (Mr. Josep Borrell should be sent, posthaste, a copy of Bat Ye’or’s seminal Eurabia). They were hoping, in many cases, to be able themselves, or to have their friends, relatives, and business associates recycle petrodollars, which would naturally be directed to those toward whom the Muslim Arabs felt had done the most to promote Arab interests and the Muslim agenda. And that included giving the Arabs a large say in who taught what about Islam, and where, in France. And this too had consequences.
The deux-rivistes -- of whom Dominique de Villepin is a perfect example, with his gush about Islamic greatness, his conceit that because he was born in 1953 in Sale, next to Rabat, he therefore "understands" the Arabs -- are coming a cropper today. But they still do not realize it. Nor do those who in other countries parroted the same nonsense, the nonsense which says: the only real division between Europe and North Africa is that pesky Mediterranean sea.
No, that sea is the least of it. There is a gulf that divides North Africans from Europeans. That gulf is called Islam. That is what Josep Borell should be studying -- but who can he trust to guide him through the Qur'an, Hadith, and Sira, and understand their effect on Believers, when a small army of apologists for Islam has been deployed all over Western Europe, and now constitutes an army of occupation that controls much of what it is possible to learn about Islam, and what is off-limits for investigation and discussion?
In the 1970s, at the end of his life, the distinguished French scholar of Islam Charles-Emmanuel Dufourcq foresaw the terrible consequences of the heedlessness of French immigration policy, and the madness of believing that any Euro-Arab Dialogue could lead to anything but another occasion in which the persistent, relentless, and cunning Arab side would wear down or trick the European side and gain every advantage. And that is exactly what happened, and happens still. The Arabs and Muslims were given a large say in how Islam would be perceived and taught in France and elsewhere in Europe, and they took full advantage of that. Meanwhile, those who had nothing like the scholarly background of Dufroucq, Abel, Fagnan, and other French Orientalists, managed to rise high as advisors on Islam. Deplorable and missing-the-point researchers (conductors of state-supported "recherches" on this and on that) such as Gilles "Wrong Again" Kepel and Olivier "Always Wrong" Roy rose high and are still in place, misleading yet another group of French leaders who, no matter what good grades they may have obtained at the Ecole Nationale d'Administration (ENA), never learned to think for themselves.
[Posted by Hugh at March 31, 2006]
at May 2, 2008 1:32 AM
Great post, Hugh. You hit all the nails.
The Tenth Crusade is Europe's only chance. Force is required from the bottom up.
Posted by: Jimmy Bones at May 2, 2008 2:13 AM
Hugh,
For 15 centuries Europeans have tried to re-create the Roman Empire, surely that's what the EU is all about, North Africa and Turkey are natural extensions to the EU.Some modern Europeans seem to forget (1)the original enterprise took a long time and (2) they have to be very careful whom they invite in.(3)the Romans didn't put up with any nonsense. Perhaps the French are blinded by dreams of lost empires and have forgotten the original successful formula.
Posted by: Mac at May 2, 2008 3:00 AM
Looks like we're going to have go "Over There" again one of these days and straighten things out like we had to do in WWI and WWII!
Posted by: PatrickHenry at May 2, 2008 12:42 AM
Please make it quick, you are most welcome. I can't wait for the US to come over and help us clean up the place.
Posted by: Kim Hartveld at May 2, 2008 6:59 AM
Is Sarko becoming a little megalo...?
It sounds like he is trying to be the next Napoleaon. well he already has the same size.... but it looks like the brain needs to be returned to the factory.
Posted by: Tartine at May 2, 2008 11:42 AM
Combine that date with Bastille day and you'll get a 4 day weekend! Sarko's a genius.
Posted by: MP at May 2, 2008 12:38 PM
MP
yes, true and also a 4 day week end WITH PAY . otherwise ,they are going to start more riots and more cars are going to be burning.
at May 2, 2008 3:06 PM
Is this Segolène Royal in male drag?
Posted by: Ummah Gummah at May 2, 2008 9:00 PM
"He was forced to scale back plans for a full EU-style "Mediterranean Union" after fierce resistance from Germany, which feared it would split the EU and siphon off common funds."
Don't get too excited by this so-called "scaling back". All it means is that Sarkozy's own proposed plan for a Mediterranean Union, originally put together during his election campaign, has been shelved.
This is largely because of fears that it would undermine the EU's own Euro-Mediterranean Partnership (the Barcelona Process) which envisages closer political, social and economic ties with the EU's "partner states" in the Mahgreb and the Middle East. From the EU's own website.
"The Euro-Mediterranean Partnership thus comprises 35 members, 25 EU Member States and 10 Mediterranean Partners (Algeria, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Palestinian Authority, Syria, Tunisia and Turkey). Libya has observer status since 1999."
This project aims to create a free trade zone between the EU and these partner states, leading eventually to the extension to the citizens of these states the same rights - including freedom of movement and freedom of residence - that are currently available to EU citizens within the EU member countries.
It's all set out on the EU's own website, complete with a handy map of the Euro-Med region.
http://ec.europa.eu/external_relations/med_mideast/intro/index.htm
This scaling back of the Mediterranean Union is in no way a victory, as Euro-Med's plans go even further. Whether they will ever be fully implemented is questionable, but the objective has been in place ever since the Barcelona Process was set out in 1995.
Posted by: Matamoros at May 2, 2008 9:48 PM
And remember when we were all so scared about Turkey joining the EU?
Posted by: Voltaire at May 3, 2008 9:42 AM
And remember when we were all so scared about Turkey joining the EU?
Posted by: Voltaire at May 3, 2008 9:42 AM
"Everyone should stay calm. No one is imposing anything,"
I did not vote for it. Who gave you the authorization? Please, quit!
Posted by: PineTree at May 3, 2008 10:48 PM
PineTree is right everyone!!! Just grab your ankles and place you heads between your knees, right where the muslims want you! Don't get so mad! It's ok if a few hundred of our daughters get raped by muslims every year...because most of them are alright! So what if muslims can't control their unruly sons...they don't burn that many cars or break that many windows, or mug that many grandmothers, and they never gang up on our sons and beat them to a pulp...well, they hardly ever do. And we should welcome ethnic diversity into our countries...after all, it was so boring being able to walk our streets without looking over our shoulders in fear of maurading muslim gangs, wasn't it?
So let's welcome the Sarcrazy plan...don't we all love looking at those sexy burkas? Their burka eyes are so riveting! Please quit...we should welcome the poor downtrodden hordes from the middle east...to turn our backs on them would be so, so CONSERVATIVE, and we've all been liberals since the beginning of time and look where it's gotten us! We can't change now, CAN WE???!!! Please QUIT...NOT TODAY! NOT TOMORROW, NOT EVER!
Posted by: PatrickHenry at May 4, 2008 1:59 AM
How idiotic. Sarkozy should focus on tangible benefits for EU citizens over his grandiose plans.
His problem would be simple, though: He can't find any.
Posted by: Henrik at May 5, 2008 8:48 AM
Monsieur le Président,
Did the people vote for you to have a "Mediterranean Union"? Do you represent the people who support your power?
PLEASE QUIT!!
at May 5, 2008 10:58 AM
Monsieur le Président,
Did the people vote for you to have a "Mediterranean Union"? Do you represent the people who support your power?
PLEASE QUIT!!
at May 5, 2008 10:59 AM
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