Friday, November 20, 2009

Is Von Rumpuy The Scarlet Whore Of Babylon?

No, but I wanted to use the phrase "Scarlet Whore of Babylon" and link to this post about Von Rumpoy's deeply held Roman Catholicism which appears to influence his political outlook strongly.
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4 comments:

Mark said...

'Big Ian' is of course no longer an MEP. Had he been, I could certainly imagine him booming out this insult in Van Rumpuy's direction during the coronation/confirmation event !

3:56 PM, November 20, 2009
tolkein said...

Oh, he can't be as bad as I feared then. But just because he's devout doesn't necessarily make him any good at his job.

5:08 PM, November 20, 2009
Laban said...

He doesn't do 'devout' any more.

See this post by Paul Belien.

Our paths crossed at intervals until 1990, when the Belgian Parliament voted a very liberal abortion bill. The Belgian King Baudouin (1930-1993), a devout Catholic who suffered from the fact that he and his wife could not have any children, had told friends that he would “rather abdicate than sign the bill.” The Belgian politicians, convinced that the King was bluffing, did not want the Belgian people to know about the King’s objections to the bill. I wrote about this on the op-ed pages of The Wall Street Journal and was subsequently reprimanded by the Belgian newspaper I worked for, following an angry telephone call from the then Belgian Prime Minister, a Christian-Democrat, to my editor, who was this Prime Minister’s former spokesman. I was no longer allowed to write about Belgian affairs for foreign newspapers.

In April 1990, the King did in fact abdicate over the abortion issue, and the Christian-Democrat Party, led by Herman Van Rompuy, who had always prided himself on being a good Catholic, had one of Europe’s most liberal abortion bills signed by the college of ministers, a procedure provided by the Belgian Constitution for situations when there is no King. Then they had the King voted back on the throne the following day. I wrote about the whole affair in a critical follow-up article for The Wall Street Journal and was subsequently fired by my newspaper “for grievous misconduct”. A few weeks later, I met Herman at the wedding of a mutual friend. I approached him for a chat. I could see he felt very uncomfortable. He avoided eye contact and broke off the conversation as soon as he could. We have not spoken since.

7:51 PM, November 20, 2009
Mark said...

The link to Paul Belien's post at the Brussels Journal is the most enlightening thing I've read so far about our new 'President'.

He would appear no longer to be the 'Scarlet Whore' , but is instead the Dark Blue Whore (with Gold Stars).

2:36 PM, November 23, 2009

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