A quote from The Sunday Times [Johannesburg, South Africa], 26 November 2006

A report by Britain’s chief immigration think-tank, Migrationwatch, said more than 100,000 British-born Londoners have left the UK capital this year as immigrants stream into the city. Meanwhile, another report by private analysts predicts that the white exodus is set to accelerate further, and that London’s immigrant population will jump from 40% to 60% in just 12 years.

Have you noticed New York residents do not fear a cutoff of their natural gas supplies because of a potential political or economic dispute with Texas? But envision a scenario where the State of Texas owned all of the natural gas in that state and the distribution network to other states, and where the governor of Texas decided to ignore pre-existing contracts in order to force New Yorkers to pay more for their gas since they were totally dependent on the Texas monopoly.

It is the peculiar genius of Byzantine history that its glory reached its apogee in the era known to the West as the Dark Ages. It has no great literary heritage – a half-millenium of Muslim domination ensured the annihilation from memory of its major works beyond the Alexiad of Anna Comnena, the anonymous epic of Digenes Akritis, and various religious texts. The latter survived because the Church survived, even as the Empire did not. Chief among them are the great liturgies, and chief among the great liturgies is the Liturgy of St John Chrysostom. It is the queen of liturgies: a Greek epic of its own, also of the Western Dark Ages, emphatic and deliberate in its insistent worship of Christ. The liturgy has a heavenly glory in its song and prayer. It also has a mundane length to it. Properly done, it lasts hours. Yesterday, it lasted five hours, from 8am to 1pm. It’s a feat of endurance for the best Christian – particularly as the great majority of it has one standing. I am not among the best Christians. But yesterday, I did it.

A quote from Paul Belien at Pajamas Media, 30 November 2006

If there is any danger that [European] far-right groups […], become involved in ethnic cleansing, it will not be a case of the indigenous Fascists going after the Muslims, but rather of the Neo-Nazis joining the Muslims when the latter go after the Jews. Peters warns that “Europe’s Muslims are living on borrowed time.” I fear Europe’s Jews are living on borrowed time.

[…] The ageing and dwindling group of indigenous Europeans will not exterminate the young and growing group of Muslim immigrants. When it comes to fighting, old people are no match for youngsters. The only way for an older generation to exterminate a younger one is through abortion. That, unfortunately, Europe has done – with its own children.

Two hours ago, Pope Benedict XVI and Patriarch Bartholomew I celebrated the Liturgy of St John Chrysostom in the Patriarchal chapel in Istanbul.  They then emerged into the sunlight, joined hands and proclaimed their goal of a reunified Church.  I was there for both -- and here is my photograph of this incredible event.

On 25 November 2006 the British Muslim apostate Anwar Shaikh died in his home in Cardiff. I would like to pay him homage by reproducing my review of one of his last books, Islam and Terrorism.
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The Hagia Sophia is a tragedy in being.

At the center of old Constantinople stood the Church of the Holy Wisdom -- the Hagia Sophia. Where the great cathedrals of the West took decades or centuries to erect, the Hellenized Romans of the eastern Empire built the largest house of worship in Christendom in just five years. And they did so in the depths of the Dark Ages -- and it is still the largest free-standing domed church on the planet. The Hagia Sophia is a testimony to the genius and glory of what Dimitri Obolensky called the Byzantine Commonwealth. But it is more than a mere testament to material prosperity or strength of will: it is a monument to an enduring faith. By the time the Emperor Justinian commissioned the Hagia Sophia, Christianity had been in the ascendant over the paganism of antiquity for nearly two centuries. Multiple Church councils had gone by, and the Empire was shrinking dramatically. Still, if there was an effort to be made, this was it. Not on an imperial palace, nor on a monument, nor on a battlement -- which might have been the more sound investment for the Constantinopolitan -- but on a place of prayer.

A quote from Mark Steyn at Powerline, 27 November 2006

If you don’t breed, you can’t influence the future. And furthermore a disinclination to breed is a good sign you don’t care much about the future. That’s why the Spaniards, who fought a brutal bloody civil war for their country in the 1930s, folded instantly after those Madrid bombings. When you’ve demographically checked out of the future, why fight for it?

US President George W. Bush was in the Estonian capital Tallinn on Monday and Tuesday and travelled on to Riga, Latvia, where he met leaders of NATO. Bush thanked the Estonians for their support in Afghanistan and Iraq. His visit is seen as a clear signal to Moscow that the Baltic States are out of the Kremlin’s sphere of influence. The one thing that was NOT on display in Tallinn and Riga was anti-Bush protests or any visible hostility towards the visit of "the biggest tyrant and killer."

Yesterday afternoon, I returned to Oslo from a short trip to Flanders. These days, airport security is mostly focused on preventing people from bringing any potentially liquid substances onto the plane, so I emptied the little bottle of water I had before I proceeded to security control. It didn't help though: the empty bottle was confiscated because, as it happens, empty bottles are on the black list too. I'm not sure whether it were the remaining drops of water inside the bottle, or the possibility that I would fill the bottle up with water again afterwards, but I certainly wasn't allowed to take it along.