A quote from Nidra Poller in The Washington Times, 9 May 2007

On the eve of the final round, Miss Royal declared on RTL television that Nicolas Sarkozy was a liar, a brutal man and a danger to the nation, and that his election would provoke a massive domestic uprising. If, as alleged in Le Monde on Monday, the Socialist candidate knew by then that she had no hope of winning, the implicit call for rebellion is all the more reprehensible. [...]

On Sunday, 85 percent of the French electorate went to the polls -- a record number -- and 53 percent of them cast a vote for Nicolas Sarkozy. According to the New York Times' Katrin Bennhold and Elaine Sciolino, the supporters of the "fiery" Mr. Sarkozy went with the message "it's time to reform the economy." Everyone in France and Europe realizes, however, that the economy had nothing to do with Sunday's historic verdict. Mr. Sarkozy won because of his tough rhetoric against the Islamist "thugs" (his word) who aim to rule the country, where over 10 percent of the population already adheres to the Muslim faith.

As predicted, or more accurately, threatened by Ségolène Royal, there is violence in the wake of Nicolas Sarkozy’s victory in the French presidential election. The riot and mayhem in the streets of Paris recalls past acts of destruction and outrage at the hands of losing partisans: from the 1996 brawls in Washington, DC, by Dole supporters; to the destructive spree of angry Tories in the City of London in 1997; to the recent smashing of shop-windows by Republicans on 8 November 2006; and yes, to the violence visited upon the hapless City of Light by RPR youth in the aftermath of Mitterand’s 1988 victory in France. The present wreckage on French streets — see an excellent series of photos here — is therefore of a piece with long-established Western tradition.

A quote from Pieter Dorsman at Pajamas Media, 6 May 2007

[I]f it hadn’t been for Pim Fortuyn – murdered five years ago today – [Theo] Van Gogh would still be alive and Hirsi Ali would still be producing dull policy papers for the Dutch Labour party.

On Wednesday last week, yes the day before the British local elections when nobody was looking, the combined weight of the Education and Environment Ministries started to send out their Secondary Schools Climate Change Pack.

This kit contains,

DVD copy of An Inconvenient Truth
DVD containing four short films commissioned by Defra:
Tomorrow’s Climate, Today’s Challenge
My CO2
Diaries of the Climate Change Champions
The Carbon Cycle animation by Climate Change Champion Sofia Selska
A leaflet on the Sustainable Schools Year of Action
Links to comprehensive online guidance on how teachers can use these resources in the classroom.

Why would criminals want to visit a mosque? Could it be that the difference between crime and Jihad isn’t that great?

A quote from the Dutch news service NIS, 5 May 2007:

Most criminals in the Netherlands should be able to serve their sentence at home in the future. Justice Minister Hirsch Ballin is to introduce house arrest as a new main punishment. Criminals can then also visit friends or a mosque for two hours a day.

It has been documented countless times that journalists in Denmark (and many other countries) to a very large degree vote for parties to the left of the center. But a totally different picture emerges when looking at their non-professional colleagues in cyberspace. The weekly Mandag Morgen has published a survey which labels 19 out of the 20 most visited Danish political bloggers as conservative or leaning towards the political Right. To Kim Møller, who runs the most popular blog in this survey, Uriasposten.net, the result comes as no surprise, but is a natural result of the grossly lopsided coverage in the traditional media. "If you want a conservative view on developments in society, you won't find it there," he says to the new, conservative online newspaper 180Grader.dk.

The International Cultic Studies Association (ICSA) is holding its Annual International Conference in Brussels from 29 June to 1 July. ICSA is “concerned about psychological manipulation and abusive relationships, especially as they manifest in the interaction of individuals with cults, new religious movements, and related groups.”

Preceding its conference, ICSA was planning a special day on Islamic radicalism. They proposed me as one of the speakers but Henri de Cordes, president of a Belgian government organization, the Information and Advice Center on Harmful Sectarian Organizations (CIAOSN in French, IACHSO in English), vetoed me.

A comment from “Archonix” (an Englishman) at Gates of Vienna, 30 April 2007

[T]he EU economies are not substantially better than they were in the 90s. Many are at the same level, others are worse. Ask any Italian what he thinks of the economy at the moment and if you're lucky he’ll just shout at you for a few hours. The only reason your dollars don’t seem to go far any more is because the dollar has fallen significantly, not because the euro has risen. The euro is placing a massive inflationary burden on the EU economies, which no longer have the mechanism of altering interest rates in order to control inflation.

Further, there is no mechanism for national debt transfer, as exists in the US, which places further inflationary pressure on individual member states. This pressure is compounded by inflation in members states that are net recipients of EU funding (Spain and Ireland as examples) who are able to cut taxes to miniscule amounts because they’re getting funded by the other EU member states. All of this is combining to produce an inflationary economy with no control mechanism. Unemployment has risen constantly within the euro zone since the euro was introduced, and productivity has fallen just as constantly. National debts are going up, taxes are rising, GDP is falling.

A quote from Socialist Belgian MEP Véronique De Keyser in the European Parliament, 25 April 2007

If the Israeli ambassador comes in the future to speak of Israel’s security, I feel like I want to strangle him.