It is a good thing that Sweden is “the world’s most democratic country” or one could think they might be in trouble:

Passengers on Stockholm’s metro fled Tensta station in panic on Wednesday evening after someone threw a tear gas bomb into the ticket hall, filling it with smoke. Security guards patrolling the station in the northern suburb of Stockholm raised the alarm at around 7pm. The object is thought to have been thrown into the station from Tensta square. At 7.50 pm train traffic between Rinkeby and Hjulsta was stopped for the rest of the evening.

On this no comment is necessary:

ENDS Europe DAILY (EED) 2210, 22/11/06

The European commission has effectively admitted exaggerating environmental impacts on human health in an action plan launched two years ago.

Foreign affairs – whether referring to the classical relationships to neighbors, the recent past’s regionalism, or today’s globalism - are neglected in democracies. We live in an age in which not cosmopolitans but the locally-minded determine public decisions. Indeed, “all politics have become local.” Democracies are locally inspired and are therefore apt to ignore world affairs. Correspondingly, the polity’s global role and the implications for its welfare are unseen when the (under informed) citizen decides how the power delegated to government is to be used.

Last September Halima Chehaïma, the 18-year old daughter of a Moroccan father and a Flemish mother, was elected Miss Brussels. Until next week Ms Chehaïma was also the absolute favorite of the bookmakers for the election of Miss Belgium next month. She was thought to be an excellent candidate to symbolize the multicultural paradise that Belgium has become. However, a girl’s dream was shattered.

A quote from Hal G.P. Colebatch, a lawyer who worked on the staff of two Australian Federal Ministers, in The American Spectator, 20 November 2006

It has now been found that in Australia an A$4,000 (about U.S. $3,600) maternity payment introduced by the Government in 2004 has helped to accelerate the nation's birthrate with more than 10,000 extra babies born in the past year. […] [Implementing a policy like this], however, would call for a great deal of political courage in Western Europe if it were to be helpful and not harmful. The survival of national identity would be the major purpose of the exercise. To avoid being counter-productive, [maternity payments] would have to be given only to people who are an authentic part of the nation and its culture.

To give grants to unassailable and hostile immigrant communities as a reward for breeding more would produce the opposite result to that intended. […] At present I can't see any Western European government grasping that particular nettle (except possibly the French, who for all their fault have a streak of realism when the chips are down).

A quote from George Soros at a meeting in Brussels, 20 November 2006

To my mind the EU embodies the principles of an open society.

Canadian writer Mark Steyn [whose mother is Flemish] thinks “The future belongs to Islam.” The main reason for this, according to him, is demography, with massive population growth in Islamic countries and low birth rates in infidel nations. He makes some assertions I agree with, such as that big government is a national security threat since “it increases your vulnerability to threats like Islamism, and makes it less likely you’ll be able to summon the will to rebuff it.”

Upon learning the camp of France's Socialist candidate for president has offered up a choice to the United Kingdom:

Ségolène Royal, the Socialist candidate for the French presidency, wants Britain to choose between being a "vassal" of the United States, and embracing a French-led drive for European integration, her adviser on Europe has revealed.

He demanded efforts to integrate foreign policy and cast that struggle in searingly anti-American tones. Mr Savary said: "The question that needs to be asked is – do we want to be vassals of the United States, do we want to be a 51st state?"

A quote from Paul Goodman MP in a speech in the House of Commons, 15 November 2006

Islamism divides not on the basis of class or of race, but on the basis of religion. To this politician, it has three significant features. First, it separates the inhabitants of the dar-al-Islam – the house of Islam – and the dar-al-Harb – the house of war – and, according to Islamist ideology, those two houses are necessarily in conflict. Secondly, it proclaims to Muslims that their political loyalty lies not with the country that they live in, but with the umma – that is, the worldwide community of Muslims. Thirdly, it aims to bring the dar-al-Islam under sharia law. [...]

Let me give a hard example of what that means [...]. The Home Secretary was recently and notoriously heckled at a public meeting in Leyton by Abu Izzadeen, another convert to Islam, who was formerly known as Trevor Brooks. He said to the Home Secretary:

Following the September 2006 election, Fredrik Reinfeldt became Prime Minister of Sweden, presiding over a centre-right coalition government. This is, in my view, positive. Sweden has been described by some as a “one-party state,” since the Social Democrats have been in power for 65 of the last 74 years, and had more or less merged with the big labor unions and some government agencies. It is healthy that other parties are in power for a while.