A quote from Roy Liddle in The Spectator, 11 November 2006

Apparently almost a million British citizens have left the country since 2000, to live somewhere else. Last year, according to the Office for National Statistics, 380,000 people left Britain, of whom about 200,000 were British citizens. At the same time, though, 565,000 immigrants arrived in Britain, the overwhelming majority from […] [Muslim] Pakistan and Bangladesh.

These facts were reported as if they were entirely unrelated. Nobody dared to venture that there was perhaps a very direct and causal relationship […] Even for our most free-thinking and dependable think-tank, Civitas, this was a bridge too far. Its spokesman, Robert Whelan, ventured that perhaps the parlous state of the [national] health service [NHS] was to blame for the exodus. You know, I suspect the majority of those who left had next to no contact with the NHS; they are, in the main, pre-middle-aged and healthy. No, it seems patently clear to me that an important reason […] that so many Brits are getting the hell out is that they think there are too many non-European foreigners here […]

A quote from Expatica, 10 November 2006

In the first nine months of this year, almost 100,000 people left the Netherlands to settle elsewhere, 12,000 more than the same period last year. […] The net effect means the Dutch population was reduced in the 2004-06 period by 75,000. In the preceding three years, there was a positive net migration of 75,000. Despite the dramatic reversal, the number of immigrants is also on the increase.

A quote from the German weekly Der Spiegel, 10 November 2006

Faced with poor job prospects, high taxes and an intrusive bureaucracy, more and more Germans are choosing to emigrate. Most of those who leave, though, are highly qualified [and young] – which could mean devastating economic consequences. [...] They are fed up with living in a country where all opportunities already seem to be taken: opportunities to succeed in one’s career, to own property and to achieve prosperity.

The controversial imam Raed Hlayhel, who was very active one year ago stirring up hatred against Denmark in the Arab world, has announced that he is leaving Denmark and will never come back:

"I have always said that if the Danish courts do not punish the newspaper Jyllands-Posten [for publishing the Muhammad cartoons] I will leave this country. And I will never come back."

As far as I know nobody has asked him to come back yet…

A quote from French Gaullist [Conservative] presidential frontrunner Nicolas Sarkozy in Le Figaro, 10 November 2006

[Globalisation is] the cause of the protest vote and the rallying of increasingly large parts of the population to protectionist arguments. […] Europe needs protection. The word protection does not frighten me.

I have not been posting much this week since I was attending the general meeting of the Mont Pelerin Society in Guatemala City. Today (it is still 9 November here) is the 17th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. We just heard a speech by former Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar, who brought homage to Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, Pope John Paul the Great, Alexander Solzhenitsyn and others and asked us never to forget the millions of victims of communism. Aznar also said that “today’s threat is no longer Soviet missiles. The threat is terrorism.” He added that “Islamic terrorists consider our democracy and freedom to be unbearable” and that policies of appeasement do not work: “Appeasement will not work against Islamic terrorism. We must not forget this lesson,” he said.

There are moments when the self importance of MEPs (Members of the European Parliament) surprises even me. This is one of those moments.

The Italian MEP Marco Pannella has called on the Italian government and the European Commission to express to the Iraqi Government their dissent concerning the death sentence for Saddam Hussein. Pannella “reaffirmed his availability to be appointed to Iraq in order to save Saddam.”

Go figure.

Pannella’s organisation is called “Hands off Cain.” The Iraqi court spoke out for Abel.

On Wednesday 8 November, the European Commission recommended that the Turkish membership talks proceed through to the end of the year. But, how long should the Turkish EU membership talks last? Given the embarrassingly weighty opposition and the lack of serious commitment by any other EU member state to fully back the Turkish government, why are the discussions still set to continue? Since Turkey shows little willingness to embrace the free exchange of ideas (opposed by Article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code) or free exchange of labour (opposed by closure of airports to Greek Cypriots) or free exchange of trade (opposed by breaking the customs union agreement), why have European states not walked away from the negotiation table before now?

A quote from the Augean Stables weblog, 5 November 2006

100 “youths” from the “difficult neighborhoods” [...] attacked and robbed of their personal possessions passengers on the Metro inside Paris to the point that the police had to evacuate the station Chateau-Rouge, a site already on some people’s “dangerous sites in Paris” list.

This incident, which had people fleeing the subway in panic, [...] is not unprecedented. [...] [T]he French MSM [apart from Le Parisien] avoid any mention of the incident. Thus the French slowly but surely let some of the Metro stops and lines become “lost territories,” taken over by gangs whose information network is excellent, and the losers don’t even know it’s happening.

Bishop Nazir Ali of Rochester, the Church of England’s only Asian bishop, whose father converted from Islam, has skewered the central problem in the psyche of Islam in Europe. In a Sunday Times interview the Pakistan born Anglican cleric has spoken for the vast majority of Europeans in a way that their own leaders would never dare.