A quote from the Islamist ideologue Tariq Ramadan, professor at Leiden University, on Dutch television (Tegenlicht, VPRO), 7 January 2008

The worst thing that could happen to European society is not that the far-right comes to power. There is not much danger of that because these parties have been successfully demonized. The worst is that their ideas become “normal.” […] We are preoccupied with global warming. It is as if nature is speaking to us. It is good to address this issue. But we should also address the rigidification of our societies. When society becomes rigid this threatens democracy from the inside, in the same way that global warming threatens the universe. 

A quote from AFP, 9 January 2008

A 1,000-year-old ban on women in the Greek monastic community of Mt. Athos crumbled, albeit briefly, yesterday. […] Around 500 women and men from villages in the Halkidiki peninsula in northern Greece took a few steps into the territory of the self-governing community of some 20 monasteries before a police cordon stopped them, police and the organiser said.

According to various press reports today Sarkozy is preparing to endorse Tony Blair as the first non-rotating President of Europe. Given that the wrangling for this and the position of Foreign Minister (a job we believe Sarko would like to go to Bernard Kouchner, currently France's Foreign Minister) will be taking place during the French Presidency in the second half of this year this would be a significant endorsement. As one of the articles puts it,

A quote from a Spanish abortionist in The New York Times, 9 January 2008

There is a cloud of suspicion hanging over us […] We feel physically threatened, but nobody in the government has come out in our defense.

A quote from Wendy McElroy at The Independent Institute website, 5 January 2008

Legally and historically, England was not a bastion of religious toleration: laws against nonconformists and atheists were still in force. Yet in England, and not in France, there was an air of toleration on the street level which existed quite apart from what the law said. Moreover, even though both countries had aristocracies, England was not burdened with the unyielding class structure that crippled social and economic mobility in France. As Voltaire wrote in Letter Nine, On the Government, “You hear no talk in this country [England] of high, middle, and low justice, nor of the right of hunting over the property of a citizen who himself has not the liberty of firing a shot in his own field.”

Nicolas Sarkozy, as promised, met with the press, 600 members strong, for over two hours on Tuesday morning in the ballroom of Elysée Palace. First, the BIG SCOOP: he does intend to marry model-turned-singer Carla Bruni (a member of the gauche caviar – a “limousine liberal” as Americans would say), but the date will be announced after they are married. In other words, it’s none of our business. For more you can read this Telegraph article.

Second, he expanded on a notion he had introduced on December 31, when he presented his New Year’s wishes to his people, namely, the “politics of civilization.” No one knew what he meant by this term, borrowed from left-wing sociologist Edgar Morin, but it seems that he wants to reestablish points of reference, norms, rules criteria. “We must fight the blunders and excesses of our own civilization.”

A quote from Turkish Daily News, 8 January 2008

The Belgian people are descended from a part of the Oguz Turks tribe who settled in the region thousands of years ago, said the head of Gaziantep University’s Department of Medical Biology yesterday.

A quote from Spengler in The Asia Times, 7 January 2008

"God has a special providence for fools, drunks, and the United States of America," German statesman Otto von Bismarck is famously alleged to have said. I have only one New Year's forecast, namely that God will take a holiday, at least as far as America is concerned. The year just passed would be viewed as America's annus horribilis by any normal standard, that is, any standard except that of 2008, which will be the worst year for the US since 1980, when Jimmy Carter left office. Everything that could go wrong has gone wrong in American policy, but not as wrong as it will go now. As in 1980, a lame-duck administration will confront economic and strategic reverses. But it is worse than 1980, for no Ronald Reagan is waiting in the wings to set things right.

A quote from The Financial Times, 8 January 2008

Tony Blair, the former [British] prime minister, will this week underline his close rapport with Nicolas Sarkozy, when he speaks at a conference of the French president’s centre-right party [UMP] in Paris. [...] The French president has frequently dispatched his ministers to London for Labour government ideas on, for example, homelessness and public-private partnerships.

One of the few times Nicolas Sarkozy really spoke like a French patriot was when he visited Rome last December, met the Pope, and was made honorary canon of Saint John Lateran. The speech he delivered there was an anomaly for Sarkozy, who customarily stresses intermingling of peoples, integration, and his pet project: the Islam of France.