We have been waiting for this since TEBAF Margot first announced them, and now we have the answer. The first funding for the new European Political Foundations will be 5 million Euro per annum, starting in 2008, just in time for funding campaigns in the 2009 European elections. This is to be paid for out of your money, via the good offices of the European Parliament.

The President of Parliament, Mr Pöttering has written to to Reimer Böge, Chairman of the Budget Committee to free up the cash at the Committee meeting on the 28th February.

Another budget line who cares, you might say. What the hell is one of those anyway?

Joachim Véliocras writes at Islamisation, a website devoted to monitoring the steady Islamization of France. He has recently posted several articles on the projected Grand Mosque of Bordeaux, and questions the judgment of Alain Juppé, mayor of Bordeaux, who supports the project. Juppé, a member of President Sarkozy’s UMP party and the former French Prime Minister (1995-1997), is running again for mayor of Bordeaux in the upcoming municipal elections:

A quote from The Daily Telegraph, 26 February 2008

The Rt Rev Michael Nazir-Ali [the Anglican bishop of Rochester], who received death threats for airing his views on Islamic issues, has vowed that he will continue to speak out. His claim that Islamic extremism has turned some parts of Britain into “no-go” areas […] led to threats that he and his family would be harmed.

During the past two centuries three major European continental nations have tried to impose their will on the rest of the continent, indeed, on the globe. First France in the early 19th century, then Germany in the first half of the 20th century, and finally Russia. France was defeated in 1815, Germany in 1918 and 1945, and Russia in 1989. Britain stood up to all these attempts of the major European countries to gain European and world hegemony. In 1815 America was too young to become involved in Europe’s wars, but it became entangled in European affairs from 1917 onward. The willingness of Britain, and later also of America, to stand up against continental Europe’s bullies made London and later Washington into the natural allies of the smaller European countries, who feel threatened by their big neighbors.

By his friends shall you know the man. Tony Blair found infamy for saying “I'm a pretty straight sort of guy”. That was, like most of his bluster, a lot of tommyrot, the former Prime Minister being as sinuous as snake in the savannah. But what of his long-standing friend Paul Kagame? How straight is he?

Le Salon Beige, a French blog, received an email from a reader who took his children to visit the Basilica of Saint Denis, near Paris, where the kings of France are buried. The blog writes:

This YouTube film is of the Chicken protest last week in Strasburg. It contains impassioned oratory, and high farce – and your correspondent getting rather hot under his suit whilst remonstrating with the Parliament's Head of Security. The point is of course that while those who are pushing through the Constitution use the language of democracy, what they are doing is using the tools of technocratic totalitarianism.

A quote from Spengler at The Asia Times, 25 February 2008

Be afraid – be very afraid. America is at a low point in its fortunes, and feeling sorry for itself. When Barack [Obama] utters the word “hope”, they instead hear, “handout”. A cynic might translate the national motto, E pluribus unum, as “something for nothing”. Now that the stock market and the housing market have failed to give Americans something for nothing, they want something for nothing from the government. The trouble is that he who gets something for nothing will earn every penny of it, twice over.

This essay was inspired by Joan Acocella's review of David Levering Lewis' book God's Crucible: Islam and the Making of Europe, 570-1215. Lewis is an American historian and two-time winner of the prestigious Pulitzer Prize. Acocella's review is not bad, but she reveals little evidence that she has read authors such as Robert Spencer, Bat Ye'or or Andrew G. Bostom. She refers to Edward Said's 1978 book Orientalism, but not Ibn Warraq's excellent criticism of him in the recent book Defending the West: A Critique of Edward Said's Orientalism.

A quote from The Observer, 24 February 2008

Families are fleeing to the UK from Germany to escape a law introduced by Hitler that could lead to their children being taken into care if educated at home. One father, who arrived in Britain with his wife and five children last month, has told The Observer that his family had no choice after being warned that their children would be taken into foster care unless they enrolled them at local schools. Another, who fled in October, said he believed the 70-year-old law was creating hundreds of refugees and forcing families into hiding to protect their children.