 ROME: Senior politicians in ItalyÂ’s government launched a policy manifesto on Thursday vowing to protect Western civilisation from what they said were the twin threats of Islamic fundamentalism and a moral vacuum.
| Unfortunately, the second makes room for the first, and it's harder to fight. |
Marcello Pera, speaker of the Senate and a friend of Pope Benedict, said people in the West were ashamed to stand up for their values and often blamed themselves for being victims of terrorism. “The West has difficulty recognising itself,” Pera told a news conference to launch the manifesto. “As Pope Benedict said: ‘the West doesn’t love itself any more’,” he said.
| Only certain parts of it. Unfortunately, they're firmly ensconced in some major universities. And in Washington. |
| And Cambridge, and Berkeley, and New Haven, and ... |
The document, entitled “For the West, Force of Civilisation”, begins: “The West is in crisis. Attacked externally by fundamentalism and Islamic terrorism, it is not able to rise to the challenge. Undermined internally by a moral and spiritual crisis, it can’t seem to find the courage to react.”
| I'm giong to pause and feel a quiet glow of pride here, since the U.S. is in fact reacting, despite the efforts of the surrender block. |
Pera, a member of Prime Minister Silvio BerlusconiÂ’s Forza Italia party, wants centre-right politicians to sign up to the manifesto ahead of an April general election which polls say the centre left, led by Romano Prodi, is more likely to win.
| Prodi will be disastrous for Italia's participation in the War on Terror, and he'll be disastrous for Italy as a whole. He's a total loss with no insurance, as far as I can tell. |
Many politicians and some business and media figures have expressed support for the text, which calls for the spread of Western civilisation’s “universal and inalienable principles”.
| Freedom of religion. Personal liberty. The freedom to speak your mind. |
Berlusconi himself has yet to sign the document, Pera said, adding however that the prime minister backed the project. PeraÂ’s manifesto was launched to a background of protests throughout the Muslim world against cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad (PTUI PBUH) published in European newspapers. Many of the protests have turned violent and at least 11 people died in a riot outside an Italian consulate in Libya last week.
| Consider it an Islamist attack on the cultural front. |
Pera said the bloodshed could not be blamed on Europe. “I don’t think this can be seen as a response to something which happened in Italy and the West,” he said. “In those places, fundamentalism was already getting ready and waiting for someone to put a match to the gunpowder.” Violence by Islamist extremists in Britain and France had shown those countries had failed to integrate immigrants into society, Pera said, insisting Italy must make newcomers respect the Italian way of life.
| Otherwise it becomes the Islamic way of life... |
Pera denied any suggestion that his rallying cry to the tendency Italy’s media has dubbed the “theo-cons” — available online at www.perloccidente.it — was in any way inflammatory. “There’s nothing that suggests a clash of religions or a clash of civilisations in this document,” he said.
| It's there. They just don't mention it in the document. |
Berlusconi, who in September 2001 outraged Muslims by saying the West was a superior civilisation, gave an interview to Arab TV station Al-Jazeera on Wednesday where he dismissed talk of any clash of civilisations and condemned the Muhammad (PTUI PBUH) cartoons.
| Pay now, Silvio, or pay later. We're still going to pay. |
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