A quote from Rod Dreher at his Crunchy Con blog, 6 November 2007

This argument puts me in mind of a conversation I had in 2002 with a leading European academic, a man of the Right whom I judged to have been pleased by the campaign of Pim Fortuyn, because Fortuyn had finally broken through the European establishment p.c. Maginot line on Islam and immigration. I was wrong. The professor told me that Fortuyn had done Europe a favor in that respect, but that no civilization based on Fortuyn's hedonistic, individualistic principles could long last. We spoke not long after Fortuyn was assassinated, but it was clear that he believed a victory by Fortuyn – denounced as a fascist by the Dutch political, academic and media establishments, though Fortuyn was to the left of the US Democratic Party – would have been at best a Pyrrhic one.

During the Second World War, the Nazis worked on plans to build the “Amerikabomber,” an airplane specially devised to fly suicide missions into Manhattan’s skyscrapers.

Albert Speer, the Nazi Minister for Armaments, recalled in his diary: “It was almost as if [Hitler] was in a delirium when he described to us how New York would go up in flames. He imagined how the skyscrapers would turn into huge blazing torches. How they would crumble while the reflection of the flames would light the skyline against the dark sky.” Hitler hated Manhattan. It was, he said, “the center of world Jewry.”

A quote from Wolf Pangloss on his blog, 5 November 2007

Now I personally think that racism is ridiculous, because the similarities within ethnic groups of humans are minor when compared to the differences between individuals, whatever their ethnicity. And the similarities within humans of like pigmentation are even less. The Nazi race war was just as despicable as the Marxist-Leninist class war, not more and not less. Both Socialist creeds were responsible for millions of deaths. Both were anti-Jew, both were anti-Christian, and both have been associated with the most vile strains of totalitarianism in Muslim countries.

A quote from Gazeta Wyborcza, 2 November 2007

The strong position of the Catholic Church in Poland is not under threat, writes Miroslaw Czech, adding that the election victory of the liberal-conservative Civic Platform (PO) won't change this. "For the Church, the PO government and its wide support among the country's younger generation holds out the prospect that Poland won't share the fate of other Catholic countries like Spain or Ireland, where the process of secularisation has been particularly rapid. Under the PO government, Poland will remain 'forever loyal' to Christ and the Vatican for a long time to come. Poland is not joining the European trend of secularisation and the renunciation of the fundamentals of Catholic ethics. Over the coming years, there will be no major shake-ups. Life will continue at a comfortable pace with baptisms, first communions, weddings and funerals."

A quote from the Daily Mail, 6 November 2007

A leading opponent of plans to build Europe's largest mosque in east London has seen a chilling "obituary" for him posted on the internet. The film on video-sharing website YouTube is entitled In memory of Councillor Alan Craig and contains pictures of him with his wife and two young daughters. It was apparently posted in retaliation for his opposition to the mosque.

This is a mantra we hear so often from our own British government, so it is educative to hear it from somewhere else. The basic premise is, 'We as the sovereign government are free to do what we want'... unless it is unpopular, when we blame the EU.

Today Belgium has been without a government for a record 149 days. On Monday Euronews broadcasted this report (in English) on the Belgian crisis:

A quote from David Gow in The Guardian, 6 November 2007

The European Union opened itself up to criticism from eurosceptics and environmentalists yesterday after agreeing to split next month's summit of 27 heads of state and government between Lisbon and Brussels. Barring a last-minute change of heart, 26 presidents and prime ministers will fly by private jet to Lisbon, swiftly sign the contentious new EU treaty and hop back onto their planes, returning to Brussels for the normal sumptuous summit dinner and discussions about climate change, the Middle East crisis and the credit crunch. [...]

A quote from European Commission spokesman Johannes Laitenberger, on Jean Quatremer’s blog, 5 November 2007

There cannot be guilt by association.

A quote from EUobserver, 5 November 2007:

Legal experts now fear that if Belgium fails to have a new government by 13 December, the outgoing government, normally only charged with 'current affairs', will not have the powers to sign the [new EU treaty].

"The concept of ‘current affairs’ concerns a category of non-written legal rules, constitutional habits; and it is accepted that in general it covers three situations," legal experts Carine Doutrelepont and Pascal Lefèvre wrote in Belgian daily Le Soir.