A quote from David Ignatius in The Washington Post, 6 September 2007

[Nicolas Sarkozy] is not a grand and distant figure who talks to the French people as if they were his children, as did his predecessors Jacques Chirac and Francois Mitterrand. Instead he is in the country’s face – a “beast of the Seine,” in one description – the walking embodiment of the “rupture” he wants to bring to French political and economic life. […]

A quote from the Italian press agency Ansa, 7 September 2007

Cult Italian comedian Beppe Grillo has put the accelerator on his bid to purge parliament of convicted MPs by forging ahead with a people’s bill that would ban lawmakers with records from holding seats. […]

A quote from The [London] Times, 8 September 2007

Belgians have been shocked by a poll this week that gave 43 per cent support in the Flemish north for secession. Even in the French-speaking southern half of Wallonia, which would have the most to lose economically by partition, one in five people believes that a break-up would be favourable. […] “Prepare for divorce,” announced the cover of Le Vif, an influential [Belgian] French-language weekly magazine, which spelt out the far-reaching costs for the impoverished region of Wallonia of splitting the health and social services, railways and the national debt.

A quote from a leader in The Daily Telegraph, 8 September 2007

Belgium was partly our fault. Determined to prevent the Channel ports falling into French hands, we carved out a territory in 1831 and placed a tame princeling on its throne. Ever since, Belgium has survived by bribing and threatening its component peoples to stay together - a miniature EU, as it were. Not that the Belgian ruling house has historically shown much gratitude to Britain, intriguing with the Germans in both world wars.

Flanders, on the other hand, was a long-standing friend. Let's bring it back.

A quote from Daniel Hannan, British Conservative MEP, on his blog, 7 September 2007
 
Britain, in short, no longer has any reason to support the artificial maintenance of the Belgian state. If one or the other of the communities decides that it has had enough, we should wish them well.
 
What should happen next? As always when issues of self-determination are at stake, it’s for local people to decide. If the Flemish want an independent Flanders, fine: Flanders was an old and trusty ally to England. If they want to merge with the Dutch, and if the Dutch want to let them, then that’s fine, too: bring on Groot-Nederland. Similarly, if the Walloons prefer absorption by France to independence – the position of the small rattachist party – good luck to them. And if the 70,000-odd German-speaking Belgians decide to… oh, you get the picture.

This afternoon Judge Simon Cardon de Lichtbuer of the Brussels civil court ruled that he does not have the competence to overrule the mayor of Brussels’ banning of an anti-Islamization demonstration planned for next Tuesday, September 11. Consequently, the demonstration remains illegal.
 
Last month Freddy Thielemans, the Socialist mayor of Brussels, the capital city of Belgium which also claims to be the “capital of Europe,” banned the demonstration request by a Danish-British-German alliance calling itself SIOE (Stop the Islamization of Europe). SIOE fears that Islam is becoming the dominant political force in Europe. The demonstrators wished to protest against the creeping introduction of Islamic law (Shari’a) in many European countries.

A quote from crosswalk.com, 7 September 2007
 
Socialist lawmakers in the European Parliament wrote Wednesday to Thielemans [the mayor of Brussels] – also a socialist – supporting his decision to ban the [anti-Islamization] rally [on 9/11].
 
“Like you, we are convinced that the people behind this demonstration want above all to stigmatize a community for dark racist and xenophobic reasons as is proven by the readiness to lump Islam together with fundamentalist terrorism,” said Martin Schulz, a German who heads the Euro-parliament’s socialist group, a collection of 33 left-leaning parties from all 25 E.U. member states.

A quote from lifesite.net, 5 September 2007

Spain’s socialist government is facing a bitter back-to-school fight this September as thousands of families boycott the pro-homosexual course “Education for Citizenship and Human Rights”. […] Esperanza Aguirre, the president of the Community of Madrid (Spain’s largest province), blasted the program, calling it “indoctrination” and said that her government would only teach those portions that were not objectionable to anyone. […]

A quote from Lastango at dailypundit.com, 6 September 2007

Today the UK Independent has an article titled “Switzerland: Europe’s heart of darkness?” suggesting this threat has earned the Left’s attention:

Switzerland is known as a haven of peace and neutrality. But today it is home to a new extremism that has alarmed the United Nations. Proposals for draconian new laws that target the country’s immigrants have been condemned as unjust and racist. A poster campaign, the work of its leading political party, is decried as xenophobic. Has Switzerland become Europe’s heart of darkness?

A quote from Paul Belien at pajamasmedia.com, 7 September 2007

It is a strange phenomenon that frightened, Islamist-appeasing authorities are allowed to draw a link between terrorism and Islam as they warn citizens not to be “provocative” towards Muslims. Yet, these citizens themselves are considered “racists” and “xenophobes,” – hence criminals according to European legislation – when they are perceived as making this link.