A quote from Euronews, 22 September 2007

As calls for the break-up of Belgium along its linguistic divide grows ever louder, up to 1,000 people [400, according to today’s De Zondag, Belgium’s only Sunday paper] took to the streets of the capital on the anniversary of the country's independence to march in favour of unity. One pro-unity demonstrator said: “In Belgium, for the moment, we are in crisis. It's a pseudo-political crisis organised by lunatics. […]”

The view of Russia is clear from where I am writing this, Bucharest, Romania.  Month by month, President Putin of Russia has been erecting a new authoritarian model that owes more of its lineage to fascism than communism. 

That model can now be named:  Putinism  - a Russian nationalistic authoritarian form of government that pretends to be a free market democracy.

Unlike Soviet communism, the new Russian state does not seek to direct every aspect of political and economic life. Instead, through limited, direct control and intimidation, plus strategic investments in both institutions and people, not only in Russia but other nations as well, the Kremlin seeks to ensure favorable global press and decisions beneficial to its interests from political and business leaders around the world.

This is the press release sent out by my publisher Imprint Academic (Exeter (UK), Charlottesville, VA (US)) who just produced a new edition of my 2005 book.

‘Belgium has served its purpose – a praline divorce is in order’ (The Economist)
 
The federal Kingdom of Belgium, whose capital Brussels is also the capital of the European Union, is now in the final stage of its collapse. Every year it gets more difficult to keep Dutch-speaking Flanders and French-speaking Wallonia together in the artificial multi-national welfare state, which the Belgian and the EU authorities regard as a miniature EU, the model for Europe as a supranational federalist superstate. This provoked The Independent, not usually known for its Euroscepticism, to comment on the irony that Belgium, ‘one of the greatest advocates of a federal Europe, cannot make sense of its own federal system.’
 

In the last couple of weeks The Economist opined that ‘Belgium has served its purpose.’ Reuters asked ‘Should Belgium break up’, France’s Liberation headed a front page ‘What if Belgium splits’ and even the New York Sun ran an op-ed asking ‘Who needs Belgium?’ The Daily Telegraph wrote that the establishment of Belgium in 1830-31 was partly Britain’s fault and that it is time to bring Flanders, a long-standing friend of England, back to the community of nations.
 

A quote from Expatica, 21 September 2007

Amid concern that Flanders might yet declare independence as Belgium's political crisis drags on, French-speakers have begun to ponder the future of their Wallonia region and mainly Francophone Brussels. […]

A quote from The Washington Post, 21 September 2007

In the back room of [De Warande] an exclusive social club across the street from the U.S. Embassy here, Flemish separatists are plotting the breakup of Belgium. In their tailored suits and silk ties, they appear unlikely rebels. […] The campaign here is a modern-day separatist movement for a globalized world. This is not a war of guns and guerrillas in jungle hideouts or suicide bombings on city streets. It is a conflict debated daily in the news media, parliaments, cafes, bars and establishment clubs of a country confronting the schisms now facing nearly every European nation: the struggle over national identity following mass immigration from Asia and Africa, the preservation of native culture and language, and economic competition in an era of global markets.

A quote from Lord William Rees-Mogg in The [London] Times, 17 September 2007

Some people, perhaps the English people in particular, are worried by English nationalism. I am not. I think that a healthy nationalism is the shield of liberty. We know what the English people want. The latest poll for Great Britain shows that 60 per cent want a referendum on a European treaty: only 16 per cent are opposed.

I do not think that Gordon Brown is English, or that he understands that English nationalism is just as attached to independence as Scottish.

A quote from Taki in The Spectator, 22 September 2007

As David Gilmour correctly speculates, perhaps Garibaldi and Cavour did the Italians a great disservice by uniting them. (“Might not industrial Lombardy have succeeded as a sub-Alpine Belgium?”) Er, yes and no, as Belgium itself is about to break up, something I fervently pray for. Belgian politicians are a disgrace — French-speaking ones, that is — and the quicker the Flemish majority gets rid of bums like Louis Michel, the better for the rest of us Europeans.

A quote from Fjordman at jihadwatch.org, 20 September 2007

It is true that some Greek and other classics were translated to Arabic, but it is equally true that Muslims could be highly particular about which texts to exclude. As Iranian intellectual Amir Taheri explains: “It is no accident that early Muslims translated numerous ancient Greek texts but never those related to political matters. The great Avicenna himself translated Aristotle’s Poetics. But there was no translation of Aristotle's Politics in Persian until 1963.”

A quote from Gideon Rachman at his blog, 18 September 2007

This week [French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner] has made the headlines, by saying of Iran - "We have to prepare for the worst and the worst is war." This goes beyond even what George W. Bush has said. His preferred formula is that – “All options are on the table”.

A quote from Boris Johnson MP in The Daily Telegraph, 20 September 2007

It is a superb and suggestive irony that the people of Europe are now being forced to accept a new constitutional document intended to unify 25 different polities, and yet the desire for national self-government is so strong that Belgium itself – the very country that plays host to the EU institutions – is in danger of breaking up.