Thursday, March 13, 2008

All of Europe

"It was in these halls that a colleague turned to me amidst a MEP’s speech about the mass deportations in her country. Why can’t you people forget about the past and think of the future? he asked.

"It is perhaps uncomfortable to hear but while we all know the history of Europe we know also that that Europe is actually only a part of Europe, as the great historian of Europe Norman Davies has so effectively shown.

"For the history of Europe includes the history of all of Europe, with all of its glory and woes. We are today the inheritors of the Europe of Bismarck’s social reforms as well as of the Salazar regime. Of the world's first constitutional democracy as well as the repressions of brutal internal security services."
Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves, speaking in Strasbourg.

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