If people were not allowed to own chickens and if chicken eggs and meat could not be legally sold, how many chickens would there be? The reason chickens, cattle, catfish, and goldfish are not endangered is because they are owned by private parties, bred and raised in captivity, and sold for commercial profit – hence there are billions of these animals. The poor sea turtle is endangered precisely because the global environmental lobby refuses to let sea turtles be commercially farmed and marketed.

A quote from Theodore Dalrymple in The Claremont Review of Books, Fall 2006

Both Bawer and Berlinski insist that one great difference between Western Europe and America is the survival of religion in America, which gives Americans a moral backbone (for want of a better term) that Western Europeans do not have. For myself, I am somewhat skeptical of the strength of American religious feeling compared with the breadth of the religious affiliation that they claim. If Americans were to experience a loss of confidence in their country’s power, whether objectively justified or not, the crisis of meaning and purpose might strike them too. After all, pusillanimity is not even now confined to Western Europeans, though it is no doubt at its worst among them; the American response to the Danish cartoon crisis was little short of disgraceful, both in the government and the press. Indeed, the French for once were considerably less cowardly.

A quote from David Rennie in The Daily Telegraph, 5 October 2006 (=yesterday)

Radical Muslims in France’s housing estates are waging an undeclared “intifada” against the police, with violent clashes injuring an average of 14 officers each day. As the interior ministry said that nearly 2,500 officers had been wounded this year, a police union declared that its members were “in a state of civil war” with Muslims in the most depressed “banlieue” estates which are heavily populated by unemployed youths of north African origin.

A quote from Beila Rabinowitz & William A. Mayer at PipeLineNews.org, 30 September 2006

The [London] Metropolitan Police Department’s descent into dhimmitude began two months prior to 9/11, when working with the Association of Muslim Police a decidedly Islamist police union, the force began recruiting hijab-clad officers.

A quote from Anatole Kaletsky in The [London] Times, 5 October 2006

The Conservative Party has not just moved to the left, abandoning Margaret Thatcher and leapfrogging Tony Blair and Gordon Brown on to what David Cameron described as the liberal, progressive mainstream of British politics. No, the Cameron project appears to be far more audacious. He is trying to turn the “new Tories” into an unashamedly statist, high-tax, anti-enterprise party [...] The real danger is not a Tory victory; that remains unlikely. But with Mr Cameron campaigning stridently against “Labour health cuts” and for more “government leadership” in every aspect of British life, how can we expect Gordon Brown to show the necessary self-restraint?

MEDEA (the European Institute for Research on Mediterranean and Euro-Arab Cooperation), supported by the European Commission, is one of the key components of the Euro-Arab dialogue. On its own webpage, it states that:

“The Euro-Arab Dialogue as a forum shared by the European Community and the League of Arab States arose out of a French initiative and was launched at the European Council in Copenhagen in December 1973, shortly after the ‘October War’ and the oil embargo. As the Europeans saw it, it was to be a forum to discuss economic affairs, whereas the Arab side saw it rather as one to discuss political affairs.

A quote from The London Evening Standard, 5 October 2006

[A] Muslim police officer was excused from guarding London’s Israeli Embassy after he objected to the duty on ‘moral grounds’. [...] PC Alexander Omar Basha – a member of the Metropolitan Police’s Diplomatic Protection Group – refused to be posted there because he objected to Israeli bombings in Lebanon and the resulting civilian casualties of fellow Muslims. In a move which has caused widespread astonishment at Scotland Yard, senior officers in the DPG agreed that PC Basha should be given an alternative posting. [...]

The Israeli Embassy in Kensington Palace Gardens is a top terror target. The building was attacked in 1994 by Palestinian fanatics when a 50lb car bomb exploded, injuring nine and causing millions of pounds’ damage. [...] It is understood the head of the Diplomatic Protection Group, Chief Supt Jamie Stephen, approved PC Basha’s request. His boss, Commander Peter Loughborough, was “consulted” about the case and agreed with his decision.

The European Court of First Instance has rejected an action for damages by journalist Hans-Martin Tillack against the European Commission’s Anti-Fraud Office (known by its French acronym OLAF). Early in 2004, Mr Tillack, the then Brussels correspondent of the German news magazine Stern, accused OLAF officials of bribery. OLAF complained with the Belgian authorities in Brussels. This led the Belgian authorities in March 2004 to order a police raid of Mr Tillack’s home and office, in order to identify his sources within OLAF. The Belgian police seized the journalist’s computers and documents. When he complained a police officer told him: “In Burma journalists get treated much worse.”

Today the Belgian Supreme Court, the Cour de Cassation, barred Daniel Féret, the 62-year old leader of the Belgian anti-immigrant party Front National (FN), from running for and taking up elected political office in the next ten years. Mr Féret is a candidate in next Sunday’s local elections in Belgium. The FN, which only puts forward candidates in Brussels and Wallonia, the French-speaking Southern half of Belgium, is expected to gain in these elections. If Mr Féret is elected, as is expected, he will not be allowed to take up his seat.

I have been invited to become an Adjunct Fellow of the Hudson Institute. Hudson is one of America’s major think tanks. I feel honoured by the invitation and have accepted. As a Hudson Adjunct Fellow, which is an uncompensated status, I am encouraged to mention my affiliation with Hudson whenever I write or give interviews, while Hudson can refer media inquiries to me and solicit my counsel on various projects.