A quote from Reuters, 27 November 2006

The plain clothes officer in Seine-Saint-Denis said seven colleagues were attacked recently after chasing a driver who skipped a checkpoint. Their vehicle was torched and they narrowly escaped serious injury. “The high number of officers hurt means that police themselves don’t feel safe,” he said.

“That’s pretty serious, because if police don’t feel safe, you can imagine what the ordinary citizen feels,” added the officer who asked not to be identified. To protect themselves, police often move in large groups -- a tactic youngsters say is heavy-handed and overly aggressive.

Comte says the threat to police is so great in some neighborhoods they should exercise their “right to withdraw.” That means refusing to respond to emergency calls if they judge they cannot guarantee their own safety. “Frankly, it’s not worth getting your head kicked in for an end of year bonus of 200 euros ($256.8),” said the plain clothes officer.

300 people a year are invalided (on 70% final salary pensions) out of the European Commission due to psychological complaints according to the Court of Auditors and comments in the European Parliament’s Budgetary Control Committee yesterday.

A quote from Paul Belien at Pajamas Media, 28 November 2006

We see how the inner cities and suburbs in various European countries are degenerating into “no go” areas, where people get killed, where the police no longer venture and where radical Muslims hold sway. The French authorities have published a list of 751 “sensitive urban areas,” which are no longer under the control of the authorities and which have become, as Daniel Pipes remarked, the “Dar al-Islam, the place where Muslims rule.” Almost 5 million people, or 8% of the French population, live in these “sensitive urban areas.” But, apparently, there is hope, because here is Ralph Peters in The New York Post, offering to have the U.S. intervene and evacuate the [Muslim] inhabitants to America!

The Sea of Marmara is a cold gray in early winter. Its brackish waters chop against the hull of the white-and-yellow ferry as it slips toward the Princes Islands. Istanbul recedes in the distance, looking for all the world like a Muslim Venice with its spires, its domes, and its ancient mien. The parallel struck me, and I thought of the first Orhan Pamuk book I ever read – The White Castle, with its tale of Renaissance-era Italian and Turkish dopplegangers, the former the slave of the latter, who eventually swap places and worlds. Istanbul is like that, its character mirroring its geography and its aspirations as a metaphorical crossroads. It seems one thing, and then the other, even as it rests upon the bones of something dead and grand.

At night, the Hagia Sophia is invested by wild dogs. You walk about the expanse between it and the Blue Mosque, and you pull your coat tight against the early winter chill. The dogs are everywhere. They are in the streets, lolling contentedly as the odd taksi veers about. They are on the concrete, rummaging through strewn trash. They are on the grass, rooting about in the flowers, and gnawing upon disgusting chunks of rancid flesh. They ignore you. One of them barks, and at once they are all on their feet and yelping. They lope toward a solitary taksi driver who performs a small charity of sharing some meat.

A quote from The Scotsman, 26 November 2006

Almost two-thirds of English voters want full independence for Scotland, a dramatic new poll revealed […]. It finds that 59% of English voters want Scotland to go it alone, while independence is backed by 52% of Scots. […] It came as Chancellor Gordon Brown delivered an impassioned defence of the Union at Labour's Scottish conference in Oban. On Friday, Blair also warned of a “constitutional nightmare” if the SNP [Scottish National Party] wins power in Edinburgh next May.

[…] [S]eizing on the poll results, SNP leader Alex Salmond said: “[…] England has as much right to self-governance as Scotland does.”

I keep hearing the claim that “Europe is lost to Islam,” but Islam is more vulnerable than it appears, and Europe is a big place consisting of many rather different countries. Still, although I hope most of Europe can be saved, I cannot discount the possibility that certain areas or nations in Western Europe will indeed be destroyed by the immigration we are witnessing now. Some natives from countries such as the Netherlands, Germany, Britain and Sweden are already emigrating, but where are they leaving to? Most observers take it for granted that they will move to the United States, Canada and Australia, but these countries have Multicultural problems of their own, although not yet as severe as those in Europe. The most “European” countries of South America, for instance Chile, is another possibility, but one region is frequently overlooked: The formerly Communist countries of Eastern Europe.

It is no small thing to sever bilateral diplomatic ties, but Rwanda has done precisely this in relation to France, recalling Ambassador Emmanuel Ndagijimanam from Paris for consultations. This was done in response to French anti-terrorism Judge Jean-Louis Bruguiere’s recent decision to sign international arrest warrants for nine Rwandan government officials, in connection with the assassination of the Hutu President Juvenal Habyarimana on April 6, 1994, an event which set in motion the horrific events that led to the deaths of some 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus. (Several French citizens were members of the plane’s crew, hence the lawsuit in France.)

There are certain subjects that one may expect most journalists to be wholly ignorant of, and chief among them are economics and religion. On the latter, Richard John Neuhaus has offered some rather touching anecdotes of his experiences with earnest members of the Fourth Estate trying to get it right. (Interviewer: "Is it unusual that this pope is also the bishop of Rome?") As Pope Benedict XVI travels to Istanbul, one may expect to see similar displays of journalistic ignorance from various quarters. The UK Guardian's Ian Traynor sets a high standard for haphazard cribbing with a series of howlers in a history "Backstory" to the Papal-Patriarchal events.

We met Ali Bardakoglu, chief of the Turkish Directorate-General for Religious Affairs, here. Today, Der Spiegel's English-language edition runs an interview with the good cleric. Of course, Bardakoglu is asked about his role in inflaming the passions of the Muslims angry with the Pope's Regensburg address, and he responds:

The pope's speech wasn't a critique. It turned against fundamentally sacred elements of Islam in a condemning manner. In this sense, it was flawed. It shouldn't have been that way, as the pope himself later came to understand.