Yesterday's comments by Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, Secretary General of NATO at the German Marshall Fund Brussels Forum on future of NATO EU relations really shouldn't come as a great surprise. De Hoop Scheffer is a fully fledged member of the European Elite.

Reuters bluntly headline their piece “Nato chief calls for military tie-ups with EU”, and go on to explain that, “He told a security conference in Brussels it was vital that NATO and the EU had equal access to the armies of their member countries, more than 20 of which belong to both bodies”.

The children of immigrants are the largest threat to Danish society, says Torsten Hesselbjerg, head of the Danish police, in an interview with the morning newspaper Jyllands-Posten . They are responsible for the heaviest forms of crime, drugs dealing, but for them, honor, prestige and power are parts of the game too.

Our time is composed as a mosaic. Its small bits get overlooked as we tend to focus on the big chunks. This column presents some disregarded details that deserve attention.
 
1. From here it seems that color is creeping into Obama’s once free-of-race campaign. There are implications for his electability once the majority catches on.
 
2. At the time of America’s elections, the economy might be on the voters’ mind. Thereafter, the new administration’s main problem will be security. By then, the US’ “B Team” could be in charge to handle the challenge.

A Moroccan youth group from Delft in the Netherlands, calling themselves “Scheme 015 Delftse Samenzwering Shit,” [samenzwering means conspiracy] has posted a video clip threatening to kill voters and sympathizers of Dutch politician Geert Wilders. The clip shows a group of Moroccans youths provoking two Dutch lads on a crowded public train. The hooded Moroccans ask the lads, who are dressed in black, what the badges on their clothes mean. At first the lads do not react. When the Moroccans start pulling at the lads’ clothes the latter ask to be left alone. At this the Moroccans grab them from their seats and beat them up.

In theory the European Parliament ought to be the most open and democratic of the EU institutions: it is, after all, composed of those who, unlike any other EU creature, have sought and won election via the ballot box. The Bovine & Ovine (European Branch) have, however, a refined Brownshirt flavour about them.

A quote from Swiss Info, 10 March 2008

According to Lathan Suntharalingam, a [Swiss] local politician campaigning against [forced] marriages, it is an integration problem which can't be solved through "multicultural do-gooding". […] There is evidence that such unions are taking place in Switzerland. The only study on the issue so far, by the Surgir foundation in Lausanne in 2006, estimates that there are around 17,000 forced marriages in the country. A third of those involved are under 18 years old, and the practice also affects men as well as women, Surgir found.

There is a lot of debate in the French papers and websites over last Sunday’s first round of the regional elections, which were lost by president Nicolas Sarkozy’s UMP. The conservative French website Le Conservateur wrote about the election result that it was “a slap in the face” for Sarkozy:

Often there is a gap of 15 or 20 points between the candidate on the Left and the UMP candidate! […] The right-wing voters – the “popular classes” who had voted for Sarkozy [in last year’s presidential elections], probably more so than the others – stayed home, while the left-wing voters went to the polls. That this election is a national indicator can be proven by the irreversible loss suffered by the fine Christian Vanneste, drubbed on the first round in the city of Tourcoing that had elected Sarkozy, only to throw him overboard a year later.

Geert Wilders, the Dutch politician who is making a 10-minute movie about Islam entitled Fitna (Arabic for “ordeal”), has felt compelled to cancel the March 28 press conference where he intended to show his film. The Nieuwspoort press center in The Hague, which is run by a board of journalists, publishers and government press officers, demanded that Wilders pay 400,000 euros for extra safety measures. “Apparently, you have to be a millionaire to organize such an event,” Mr Wilders said. “Even if I had the money I am not going to spend it on a press conference.”

The United Kingdom Independence Party has made a film, entitled "Remote Control," about the EU's interference in our daily lives. Below is an excerpt. The whole thing can be seen here.