Mysterious Things

About the Kosovars and their putative independence; so far as I can tell, it is legal to recognise the state of Kosovo, and the Serbs need to give up their attempt to legally force the Kosovars back into Serbia, but if they (the Serbs) or any other nation don't want to recognise Kosovo qua sovereign, that's fine, too. The more sovereign states (e.g. Flanders, Catalonia, Brittany, Somaliland, whatever the Basques called their patria...) the better, so far as I'm concerned.

If today's election results are a good indication, which, pft, they probably are not; and, in any event, it doesn't make a great lot of difference if Europa has one or three territorial jurisdictions in the Belgian lands.  Le Soir with the latest results is here.

It is important to note that the N-VA, which appears to be winning about a third of the Flemish vote, is not the Vlaams Belang, the more radically Right party that is accused of all sorts of evil and anti-Islamist plottings and thuggishness.

Whose daughters can no longer be given away in marriage by their fathers; David Pryce-Jones blogs at National Review on the EU Gender Equality Bill:

... One provision of this preposterous and impudent measure is that fathers are no longer allowed to give away their daughters in the traditional church ceremony. Apparently that is to treat daughters as chattels. The whole European Union is on the point of breaking up, Greece is in flames and the Germans about to rebel, several countries in the eurozone are bankrupt beyond redemption, the euro itself has failed and soon there may be no currency for Europeans to trade in--and the giant statesmen of Brussels come up with a prohibition on fathers giving away their daughters in marriage as fathers have done in country after country, century after century....

I expect that the various national Equality Bills will soften the hardest edges of this Eurononsense but, pft, when the entire edifice collapses this, too, will pass.

John Hinderaker on the New York Times's 'revelations' about the socialist experiment in Europe. Tsk.

At the tragedy, and potentially far worse tragedy impending, of the European politicians, the 'Eurozone', and the abyss.

... Greece was just the antipasto: Italy, Spain, Portugal and others are now hanging over an abyss of debt which scarcely all the money in Europe could fill – created by countries living way beyond their means, thanks not least to the euro's low interest rates. The only possible consequence of the collapse of one of the world's leading currencies, leaving Europe with no money to trade in, would be utter chaos.

What we are witnessing here is a judgment on the entire deceitful and self-deceiving way in which the "European project" has been assembled over the past 53 years. One of the most important things to understand about that project is that it has only ever had one real agenda. Everything it has done has been directed to one ultimate goal, full political and economic integration. The headline labels put on the various stages of that process may have changed over the years, such as building first a "common market", then a "single market", finally a "constitution". But by far the most important project of all was locking the member states into a single currency....

I shall miss my wine-rubbed goat cheese from Spain and my Pellegrino water from Italy and my good Irish butter when the collapse comes but reckon that I'll have more significant worries at that point.

Written about in the current number of City Journal by Claire Berlinski? the principal subjects of her essay have hundreds and thousands of documents connected with the collapse of the USSR and its communist regime but Western publishers are evidently not much interested. 

... Indeed, many still subscribe to the essential tenets of Communist ideology. Politicians, academics, students, even the occasional autodidact taxi driver still stand opposed to private property. Many remain enthralled by schemes for central economic planning. Stalin, according to polls, is one of Russia’s most popular historical figures. No small number of young people in Istanbul, where I live, proudly describe themselves as Communists; I have met such people around the world, from Seattle to Calcutta.

We rightly insisted upon total denazification; we rightly excoriate those who now attempt to revive the Nazis’ ideology. But the world exhibits a perilous failure to acknowledge the monstrous history of Communism. These documents should be translated. They should be housed in a reputable library, properly cataloged, and carefully assessed by scholars. Above all, they should be well-known to a public that seems to have forgotten what the Soviet Union was really about. If they contain what Stroilov and Bukovsky say—and all the evidence I’ve seen suggests that they do—this is the obligation of anyone who gives a damn about history, foreign policy, and the scores of millions dead.

Perhaps after Mr Obama is retired to private life, those willing to invest the funds in publishing all of the texts Miss Berlinski discusses will come forward. 

Is once again, perhaps, to be the occasion of catastrophe and bloodshed and inhuman violence. @londiniensis g a.

Is very amusing, really. I particularly liked, 'what Europeans know about Hawaii... Lost is filmed here'.  Stupid superficial so-called adults, pft.  It is quite true that half of my co-workers aren't going to be able to tell me anything about Hungary, Andorra or Slovenia: but they don't imagine that they are members of a socio-cultural elite superior to those folks, either. 

Or is the same old game being played?  Anne Applebaum and her husband suggest that the answer to the first question may be 'yes'.  Ever since Mr and Mrs Sikorski publicly thought that Roman Polanski was a worthy object of their compassion I have regarded them both as rather deficient in a good sense of judgment but....

Because management won't let me drink all shift long anymore. Tsk.

Rand Simberg may have a point.  Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine, et lux perpetua luceat eis. 

To North Americans, I guess. It will be remembered that Dr Buttiglione is too Catholic for the European Union.

Of which the only halfway decent consequence is that it gives me an opportunity to agree whole-heartedly with Professor Heller.

Joe at ¡No Pasarán! on the practical uselessness of the European foreign minister.

Mr Obama's receipt of the Nobel Prize for Peace has encouraged many others to nominate their own long shots for the now perhaps dubious honor.

And has the better case, I think; on the other hand, as a secular priest, Father Blake is himself personally in a different position than the laity in the English dioceses, and I should think that he would make any remonstrance to his bishop privately.

To acquiesce to the State's imposition of its abortion-on-demand dogma in the Catholic schools is just wrong and that imposition and acquiescence are both inimical to the practice of the Faith--as should be obvious to any reasonable person. 

The schools question in the UK is, however, complicated by several questions having to do with how the schools were established and funded, how they are funded now, and governed, administered et cetera so I don't necessarily know for a fact the specific rights and wrongs in this business, however plain the matter looks to be from a distance. 

Who are, evidently, acquiescing to the teaching of the State's dogmas in their schools. 

Update on Thursday, February 25, 2010 at 6:16 by Marc

Father Tim Finigan posts on this subject again, also.