An article by Helena Christofi

London is the leading Islamic banking center in the West. Islamist clerics with terrorist connections and a mission to Islamize Europe are infiltrating the United Kingdom through its banking system, and British officials are encouraging them. HSBC, Lloyds TSB, and Citigroup have opened Islamic banking units and branches throughout England. In 2005 the first stand-alone British Islamic bank, Islamic Bank of Britain, opened its doors. Middle Eastern Islamic banks have also set up shop in the UK.

A quote from a reader of EU Commissioner Margot Wallström’s blög, 7 February 2007

Spare us the film reviews. We don’t pay taxes for them. If you haven’t enough work to fill your week go home and ask for your pay to be cut accordingly.

And as for the death penalty issue, why doesn’t the EU have a referendum about it?
 
H/T Berlaymonster

A quote from Life Site, 9 February 2007

Representatives from the European Union are increasing pressure on the government of Nicaragua to reverse its recent law which unilaterally forbids abortion under any circumstances. According to a report from the Catholic News Agency, the EU representation has threatened to withdraw economic assistance to the country if the abortion law is not reversed. [...]

Old articles share something with wardrobes in dark basements: when opened skeletons leap out. Revived in the present, the smartness of long ago is likely to unmask a fool. Everybody with a “past” has errors on his record that are covered up by the dust time deposits. Embarrassingly, in the Fifties this writer refused to believe the Sino-Soviet split. As the past is apt to disqualify those whose record is revived, one should avoid old publications. (Exceptions are the Jane Fondas whose credibility does not suffer from the support of systems dedicated to mass murder.) Ignoring his own advice, this writer exhumed a forgotten text. Its main virtue is that, at the time, no one wanted to publish it. Times have changed but the fundamentals of the piece are unaffected. Once spiked as extreme, it is now mainstream and so it can serve as the core of the essay.

Pity the poor powerless President of the Commission. Jose Manuel Barroso found himself remonstrating with a bunch of Dutch journalists yesterday. The new Dutch government had made it clear that they have no plans to re-introduce the Constitution. His response is priceless:

The first time I read Bat Ye’or’s description of the Eurabian networks, I found it hard to believe that something that big could go on despite the fact that I had never heard about any of it. But then I started checking the available documents myself, and discovered that it was all true. Perhaps the greatest betrayal in modern Western history, yet largely ignored by Western media.

The EU Commission and senior European officials at the very highest levels, frequently diffused through various innocent sounding and semi-official organizations, create agreements with Arabs and then quietly implement them later as federal EU policy.

In the autumn of 2005 a new bi-monthly journal was born.  It is called The American Interest and it aims to provide “A Review of Policy, Politics, and Culture”.   It seeks to be “an independent voice”, with “a pragmatic attitude toward policy problems”, and – despite its title – has opened its pages to voices of distinction and serious purpose from around the world.  It does not want to be “the guardian of any ideology”, and it belongs clearly in the political center with voices from the moderate right and the moderate left.   Its Executive Committee includes people like Francis Fukuyama and Zbigniew Brzezinsky, and its Editorial Board includes members like Samuel Huntington, Bernard-Henri Levy, Mario Vargas Llosa and others.   

The United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) really does seem to have rattled the Tories. Today we have the marvellous news that the Tories are abandoning their support for ID cards, a UKIP policy for the past few years, which can only be a good thing.

I have it on good authority that the distinguished British historian Norman Stone is minded to see what happens when you flout the illiberal genocide denial laws being touted by the EU [pdf].

A new briefing note from Open Europe [pdf] shows that the EU’s acquis communautaire – the body of EU legislation which European companies, charities and individuals have to comply with – now totals 170,000 pages. This contrasts with official assertions that the total is around 80,000 pages. By totalling up pages in the many volumes of the EU’s “Official Journal” of legislation Open Europe found that the EU has passed 666,879 pages of laws since its inception in 1957, around 26% of which is currently active. If all the legislation the EU has passed were laid out lengthways it would be over 120 miles long, whilst legislation currently in force would be 31.7 miles long.