A stunning piece appeared in Der Spiegel (July, 23), a German weekly. It shocked this writer, so it might impress the reader, too. Inevitably, the account carries one from the report’s specifics to implications that are more significant than the original details.

The two-page piece responds to a suit brought against the UN and Dutch soldiers under its command. The plaintiff alleges their responsibility for the Srebrenica massacres.

Socialists in the EU Parliament are pushing for a “Judeo-Christian-Islamic” Europe, whatever that is. Islam has nothing to do with European culture, regardless of what the European Union might say. Notice also that the EUrabians are very preoccupied with the “grievances” of Muslims. Nobody ever asks native Europeans about our “legitimate grievances.” Since we are Christians and – dare I say – white, we do not by definition have any.

Liberal politicians, like Hillary Clinton, envy Western Europe for its welfare state. They tell U.S. voters that a European-style welfare state is needed to help the poor. In reality the motives of liberal politicians are not altruistic, but egotistical. Welfare makes people dependent on the state. It is not a coincidence that liberalism and secularism are almost synonyms. Liberals want to replace God by the state.

I still get questions as to why I, being Norwegian, write more about Sweden than I do about my own country. First of all: I do write about Norway sometimes. And second of all: If you look at capital cities alone, Oslo could quite possibly be the worst city in Scandinavia. However, in virtually all other respects, Sweden is worse. And yes, it is every bit as bad as I say it is.

A quote from Prof. Roland Vaubel in The Wall Street Journal, 30 July 2007

The European Union’s democratic deficit is notorious. [...] On top of all this, consider last week’s launch of the so-called Intergovernmental Conference to hash out the details of a “Reform Treaty” based on the agreement leaders reached at a summit in June. It’s pretty much the same as the Constitutional Treaty that French and Dutch voters rejected two years ago. [...] The Reform Treaty is nothing but the old draft in a new guise to avoid another round of referendums. And as a result, the EU’s democratic deficit is not narrowing but widening.

A quote from Ethan Greenhart at Spiked-Online, 27 July 2007

Yes, the floods are indeed tragic. [...] If it isn’t bad enough that we caused the earth to weep in this manner in the first place – with our ceaseless carbon-mongering – now we have the blind arrogance to stand in the way of these floods of anger, to try to stop them, to ask: How can we prevent such a thing from happening again?! I have a different question: Who are we to prevent floods? It is akin to saying: How can we stop a child from crying? Should we seal her tearducts with an anti-weeping dam, perhaps, or dig mini-ditches beneath her eyes to catch and disperse her salty secretion? That would be shocking, wouldn’t it – something that the NAZIS might have done. Well, it’s just as shocking to call for rivers to be sealed off and dammed in (DAMNED, more like). [...]

A quote from Isabelle de Pommereau in The Christian Science Monitor, 26 July 2007

Years ago, 180 sisters of the Catholic order of the Sisters of the Divine Savior were the pulse of the city [of Mannheim, Germany]. Today, eight remain. Every weekend, roughly 150 Roman Catholics attend mass at the Liebfrauen Church, while up to 3,000 Muslims throng the Yavuz-Sultan-Selim mosque. Since the mosque was opened in 1995, Muslim shops and youth centers have become a magnet for the Muslim community.

A quote from Press Dispensary, 25 July 2007

Increasing numbers of people are taking the decision to move overseas as a result of the UK’s current immigration policy, according to www.globalvisas.com, a specialist immigration consultancy that provides immigration advice and visa services. As numbers of immigrants to the UK from the new European Union Accession states continue to grow, more and more people in the UK are choosing to take their experience and skills overseas.

The always excellent writer Theodore Dalrymple, one of the most astute observers of Britain and indeed of the Western world today, has assessed the ten years under the leadership of former PM Tony Blair. According to Dalrymple, “Many in Britain believe that he has been the worst prime minister in recent British history, morally and possibly financially corrupt, shallow and egotistical.” One of the reasons for this negative view is the rapid growth of insecurity, ironically combined with the even more rapid growth of surveillance: “The typical Briton finds himself recorded by security cameras 300 times a day does not secure him in the slightest from crime or antisocial behavior, which remain prevalent in Britain, so no one feels any safer from the terrorist threat despite the ever-increasing government surveillance.”

At the EU Observer, Anthony Coughlan, a senior lecturer at Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland, notes that in every EU member state at present the majority of laws come from Brussels. Why do national politicians and representatives accept this situation? He suggests a plausible explanation:

"At national level when a minister wants to get something done, he or she must have the backing of the prime minister, must have the agreement of the minister for finance if it means spending money, and above all must have majority support in the national parliament, and implicitly amongst voters in the country. Shift the policy area in question to the supranational level of Brussels however, where laws are made primarily by the 27-member Council of Ministers, and the minister in question becomes a member of an oligarchy, a committee of lawmakers, the most powerful in history, making laws for 500 million Europeans, and irremovable as a group regardless of what it does.

"National parliaments and citizens lose power with every EU treaty, for they no longer have the final say in the policy areas concerned. Individual ministers on the other hand obtain an intoxicating increase in personal power, as they are transformed from members of the executive arm of government at national level, subordinate to a national legislature, into EU-wide legislators at the supranational."