Gordon Brown rules out EU treaty referendum
Gordon Brown will rule out a referendum after signing up to a new European Union Treaty at a summit of Europe's leaders in Lisbon later this evening. The Prime Minister has written to Portuguese leader José Socrates, current holder of the EU's rotating presidency and summit host, conceding that for Britain the talking is over…Mr Brown's attempt to kill off Treaty debate was today set back by opinion polls showing that a large majority of Britons and other Europeans want a popular vote on an EU blueprint drawn up to replace the Euro Constitution rejected by French and Dutch referendum votes two years ago. Today's YouGov polling for The Daily Telegraph finds that seven out of ten, 69 per cent, of Britons back a referendum…

From The Telegraph (London) (dated October 18, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends October 18, 2007 (BR/EU)

Mexico's Fox openly calls for North American Union
Mexico's former President Vicente Fox is making no secret of his desire to promote a "North American Union" to compete economically with Europe and the Far East…Fox shocked many in the U.S. earlier in the week when he told CNN's Larry King that he and President Bush had agreed to work toward a common currency not only for North America but for Latin America as well…Fox explained that he and Bush intended to proceed incrementally, establishing FTAA [Free Trade Agreement of the Americas] as an economic agreement first and waiting to create an amero-type currency later – a plan he also suggested was in place for NAFTA itself…Recently, WND reported BankIntroductions.com, a Canadian company that specializes in global banking strategies and currency consulting, is advising clients the amero may be the currency of North America within 10 years…

From WorldNetDaily (dated October 12, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends October 18, 2007 (US/LA/BR)

EU treaty 'same as Constitution'
The EU treaty is "substantially equivalent" to the EU Constitution thrown out by Dutch and French voters in 2005, MPs have said…

From BBC News (dated October 9, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends October 18, 2007 (EU/BR)

Married parents 'in the minority by 2031'
Married parents could be outnumbered by single mothers and cohabiting couples within a generation, with serious implications for the health and education of children, official figures show. A report on family life by the Office for National Statistics suggests that Britain is only 24 years away from married couples being in the minority…

From The Telegraph (London) (dated October 5, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends October 18, 2007 (BR/MO)

UK 'should give up UN seat'
The United Kingdom should lose its independent voice at the United Nations and hand over its seat on the Security Council to the EU, according to the new Foreign Office Minister, Lord Malloch-Brown [in previous comments]… William Hague, the Conservative foreign affairs spokesman, said it was "alarming" that [Prime Minister] Brown had chosen to put in charge of UN reform "the man who thinks we should give up our UN Security Council seat to the EU." Downing Street said there was "no question of Britain giving up its seat"…

From The Telegraph (London) (dated August 8, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends October 18, 2007 (BR/EU/GI)

[British] PM 'advancing EU treaty on quiet'
Prime Minister Gordon Brown has been accused by the Tories of trying to push the EU Treaty through "on the quiet". Shadow foreign secretary William Hague renewed calls for a referendum to be held on the deal, insisting it meant a major transfer of sovereignty from the UK. Only 10 out of the 250 proposals had changed from the former constitutional treaty - which the Government had pledged to put to the vote before it was ditched, he added. Mr Hague was speaking as he launched a pamphlet claiming to explain the contents of the new treaty in "plain English". It says powerful positions are being created in the EU, with a President and a "high representative" who is effectively a foreign minister. The union will also be given the legal status to sign international treaties, while Britain is losing vetoes in some 60 policy areas. Mr Hague said that once Parliament returned from the summer recess it would only have nine working days to consider the treaty before it was passed. He also suggested that the document had been made deliberately "unreadable" in order to stifle concerns over the content…

From The Guardian (Manchester, England) (dated August 7, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends October 18, 2007 (BR/EU)

New EU treaty 'cut and pasted' from old
The official English text of the new EU treaty shows that it is a "cut and paste job" from the former European constitution, it was claimed last night…The reference to a constitution is out. Also cut is "symbolic" legal status for the EU's 12-star flag, an official motto and the EU's anthem. Other changes to substance are minor. The title of the EU's "foreign minister" is changed to High Representative. Provisions drawn word for word from the old constitution will give him speaking rights from British and French seats at the UN Security Council. Unlike Europe's current foreign policy representative, Javier Solana, the new minister will also be vice-president of the European Commission, weakening direct control over the post by national governments. Also lifted almost word for word from the 2004 constitutional treaty is a new "ratchet clause" making it far easier for the EU to scrap national vetoes and sidestep referendums…

From The Telegraph (London) (dated August 2, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends October 18, 2007 (EU/BR)

Belgium: Europe’s Canary in a Coal Mine
Belgium is coming apart at the seams. For four months, its 11 political parties have been unable to form a national government because the Dutch-speaking regions want greater autonomy, or even outright independence. Primarily split between Dutch-speaking Flemings and French-speaking Walloons, Belgium was formed as a constitutional monarchy where the non-French speakers were mostly treated as second-class citizens….Although the Flemish majority is somewhat more prosperous, the Walloons have a perceived stranglehold on Belgian politics. One is tempted to joke that it's an Iraq with better weather and waffles. But it isn't a mini-Iraq, and not just because they're not killing one another. It's more like a mini-European Union. In fact, that's the one thing everyone can agree on. No country is more invested in the EU experiment than Belgium, whose capital, Brussels, is also the capital of the EU. If Belgium falls to sectarianism, what does that say about prospects for making Europe into a super-Belgium?...Here's the hilarious irony of all this: The European Union is in effect subsidizing nationalism in Belgium and across the Continent. As the EU assumes more of the responsibilities of states - regulations, the economy, currency, possibly even defense - the cost of independence becomes lower… By scaling back the job description of a nation-state to a few ceremonial duties, ethnic minorities see fewer risks and a lot more rewards in breaking away. Countries such as Slovakia get to trade on their votes in the EU and the U.N. They get their own anthems and sports teams and get to teach their own language and culture. It's like a McDonald's franchise. You man the register and keep the bathrooms clean, but the folks at corporate HQ do the heavy lifting. That's why the Basques, Scots and Flemings are looking to open their own franchises. The question is whether the nationalist hunger of such McNations can be satisfied by just the symbolism of autonomy…

From National Review Online editor Jonah Goldberg at Townhall.com (dated October 10, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends October 18, 2007 (EU/BR)

Barroso and Bilderberg to the Rescue of Belgium. Will the UK Be Ousted from the EU?
Today, day 119 since the general elections of June 10th, Belgium still has no government. Belgium’s politicians, however, expect the country to have a new government soon. Yves Leterme, the leader of the Flemish Christian-Democrats, who last week was reappointed as “formateur” (Prime Minister Designate) by Belgium’s King Albert II, knows that he has no choice but to succeed in forming a government. If he does not, his political career is over. Mr Leterme, who won last June’s elections on a pro-Flemish platform, will have to withdraw all the Flemish demands because the Walloon politicians have vetoed them all… In Brussels, whether at the Belgian or the European level, the word “democracy” has a different meaning than in London or Washington. For the Eurocrats “democracy” implies that whenever the peoples of Europe reject their schemes (such as the so-called “European Constitution”), the political elites just go ahead because they know better than the people what is good for the people…Viscount Etienne Davignon, a former European Commissioner who is the chairman of the secretive Bilderberg Group and a member of King Albert II’s Crown Council,…asked whether countries such as Britain, “which consistently hamper European integration,” should not be ousted from the EU…What will happen next? Mr Leterme will become Prime Minister and will govern until 2011. His Christian-Democrats are likely to lose the 2009 regional elections. However, by then the Belgian establishment might have neutralized the Flemish secessionist Vlaams Belang (VB) [party] by taking away its finances. The Council of State, a Belgian administrative court, is soon to rule whether or not to defund the VB. This is an attempt to kill the party by depriving it of its finances…Perhaps the British, if they are lucky, will have been ousted from the EU by 2011. While continental Europe becomes ever more totalitarian, England might just manage to escape. Flanders, unfortunately, will not…

From Brussels Journal editor Paul Belien (dated October 7, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends October 18, 2007 (EU/BR)

The British anomaly: The attempt to abolish England
In 1999, Tony Blair’s government installed a Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh. Similar parliaments have since been installed in Wales and Northern Ireland. This has led to the anomaly…that, while English members of the Parliament at Westminster have no say about Scottish, Welsh or Northern Irish domestic affairs, parliamentarians from Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have the power to vote on issues that affect just England. Several proposals have been made to solve this anomaly. One of them is to abolish the Scottish Parliament, the National Assembly for Wales and the Northern Ireland Assembly. Another is to give England its own parliament, which would imply that the United Kingdom become a federation of four states – England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. The solution proposed by the Labor government in Westminster, currently led by British Prime Minister Gordon Brown (a Scot) and previously by Tony Blair (also a Scot), is to dissolve England by splitting it up into nine regions, each with their own parliamentary assembly. In a 2004 regional referendum, however, the voters in the Labor-dominated North East of England overwhelmingly rejected the plan to install an elected North East Assembly. Consequently, the British government shelved its plans for the other assemblies, but this means the… dilemma has still not been solved. The whole issue has led to a rise of English nationalism. Though many English do not demand an English Parliament, since they consider the British parliament at Westminster to be their English parliament, the attempt to split up England has made them aware that Britain is being threatened and that the very survival of England is in jeopardy. The Scottish National Party, the largest party in the Scottish Parliament, favors downright independence from the UK and wants Scotland to become a member of the European Union. Many Scottish Nationalists regard the EU as an enemy of the UK, hence their ally. The English, however, see the EU as a threat to the sovereignty of their, British, parliament at Westminster…If Scotland does not want to leave the EU while England does, some English, in order to save the UK, would subjugate Westminster to the EU. Others, however, are prepared to give up the UK in order to save democracy in England…

From Brussels Journal editor Paul Belien in The Washington Times, reposted at The Brussels Journal (dated September 26, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends October 18, 2007 (BR/EU)

The Big 'Terminological Inexactitude'
In recent weeks British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has repeatedly uttered an untruth…The cause of Mr. Brown's deceit is that European Union "Reform Treaty," barely distinguishable in its contents from the previously proposed "Constitution," which French and Dutch voters chucked out two years ago. No other EU leader tries to hide the fact that the two documents are, as Luxembourg's Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker put it, "99% the same." The British prime minister implausibly claims the opposite for the simple reason that he and his party were elected to power in 2005 on the promise that the U.K. would not ratify the constitution until it had been put to a referendum… To appreciate just why it has been so important for EU leaders to get their constitution regardless of their peoples' wishes, one must grasp the fundamental principle on which those behind the "European project" have worked toward their ultimate goal. The process favored by the visionaries who first dreamed of a "United States of Europe" as far back as the 1920s was the very reverse of how the U.S. was launched. When the Founding Fathers gathered in Philadelphia in 1787, their idea of building a nation was to start with its constitution and let the new union grow from there. The Europeans chose the opposite strategy. They knew it was always going to be a much longer haul to place long-established nation states under the rule of a new form of supranational government. That is why, as long ago as 1941, one of those visionaries, Italian ex-Communist Altiero Spinelli, proposed in his Ventotene Manifesto that the shapers of the new Europe should stealthily build up the structures of their new government over a long period without consulting the people. Only when the process was all but complete would they summon a "constituent assembly" to draft the constitution, which, Spinelli argued, the people would then acclaim by referendum as their "crowning dream." A similar strategy was conceived after World War II by the Frenchman Jean Monnet who was to become known as the "Father of Europe"…

From London Telegraph columnist Christopher Booker in The Wall Street Journal (dated September 17, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends October 18, 2007 (EU/BR)

European mayhem as Treaty triggers UK's exit
British withdrawal from the EU is coming into sharper focus, with all the grave consequences that will ensue for the Atlantic order and the cause of market liberalism…

From London Telegraph columnist Ambrose Evans-Pritchard (dated September 4, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends October 18, 2007 (EU/BR)

Vanishing England
Perhaps there will not always be an England. An exodus unprecedented in modern times, coupled with a record influx of foreigners, is threatening to erode the character of the land…The figures, making headlines in London newspapers, tell only part of the story. Between June 2005 and June 2006 nearly 200,000 British citizens chose to leave the country for a new life elsewhere. During the same period, at least 574,000 immigrants came to Britain…Britons give many reasons for leaving, but their stories share one commonality: life in Britain has become unbearable for them. They fear lawlessness and the threat of more terrorism from a growing Muslim population and the loss of a sense of Britishness, exacerbated by the growing refusal of public schools to teach the history and culture of the nation to the next generation…

From columnist Cal Thomas at Townhall.com (dated August 28, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends October 18, 2007 (BR)

The EU and the Globalist Alliance
By dismantling national borders, the EU has facilitated the largest migration waves in European history. When Poland became a member, many Poles moved to Britain, Germany etc. This left Poland with a labor shortage. They are now considering importing workers from the Ukraine and Russia to compensate for the Poles that left. At the same time, native Brits are fleeing to Spain because they don’t feel at home in Britain anymore. By such moves, you unleash a chain migration that will eventually smash nation states that have existed for ages. Yet this intra-European migration pales in comparison to the immigration from developing nations. The end result will — supposedly — be an entire continent of people without any national loyalties who will be divided, disoriented and thus presumably easier to control. Stalin did the same thing, moving large population groups around to unsettle the state and keep it disunited. The EU has learned a lot from Stalin…

From Fjordman at The Brussels Journal (dated August 5, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends October 18, 2007 (EU/BR)

Why the European Union Must Go
The European Union is basically an attempt – a rather successful one so far – by the elites in European nation states to cooperate on usurping power, bypassing and eventually abolishing the democratic system, a slow-motion coup d'état. Ideas such as "promoting peace" are used as a pretext for this, a bone to fool the gullible masses and veil what is essentially a naked power grab. It works because the national parliaments still appear to be functioning as before. This is perhaps the most dangerous aspect of the EU: It is increasingly dictatorial, but it is a stealth dictatorship, whose most dangerous elements are largely invisible in everyday life…EU Commissioner Margot Wallstrom in 2005 argued that politicians who resisted pooling national sovereignty risked a return to Nazi horrors of the 1930s and 1940s. Her fellow Commissioners also issued a joint declaration, stating that EU citizens should pay tribute to the dead of the Second World War by voting Yes to the EU Constitution. They gave the EU sole credit for ending the Cold War, making no mention of the role of NATO or the United States. This is preposterous. The European Union in fact has a lot more in common with totalitarian regimes such as Nazi Germany - and the Soviet Union - than the supposedly evil nation states it seeks to replace, especially its tendency to suppress freedom of speech, indoctrinate school children with blatantly false information and impose decisions upon its subjects without their consent…

From Fjordman at The Brussels Journal (dated July 25, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends October 18, 2007 (EU/BR)

Britons begin repairing flood damage
Gasoline-powered pumps roared into action Tuesday as stunned Britons tried to dry out their houses after the worst flooding in more than half a century…

Associated Press story at Yahoo News (dated July 24, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends July 25, 2007 (BR/ND)

Report: Al Qaida network planning UK plot of 'Hiroshima' caliber
A British intelligence report…said there is a potential threat from Al Qaida in Iraq. “A member of this network is reportedly involved in an operation which he believes requires AQ Core authorization,” the report said. “He claims the operation will be on 'a par with Hiroshima and Nagasaki' and will 'shake the Roman throne'. We assess that this operation is most likely to be a large-scale, mass casualty attack against the West"…

From World Tribune (dated July 18, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends July 25, 2007 (BR/WT)

EU eyes its next big challenges
Europe's leaders agreed at the [June] summit the key elements of a new reform treaty, to replace the unloved constitution, but a detailed final deal has yet to be agreed, and could still cause problems…Others agree that the EU may now finally see the emergence of a core Europe, instead of struggling to agree at 27…Antonio Missiroli of the European Policy Centre, a Brussels think-tank, thinks a central group of countries is likely to emerge. "There will be a group of some 10 countries equally involved in the euro, Schengen and key common policies and a very varying set of countries more on the periphery," he says…

From BBC News (dated July 10, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends July 25, 2007 (EU/BR)

Brown Says No Need for U.K. Referendum on EU Treaty
Prime Minister Gordon Brown said there would be no need for a U.K. referendum on the proposed European Union constitutional treaty, so long as five British ``red lines,'' agreed at negotiations in Brussels last month, were maintained in the detail of the document…The opposition Conservatives say Brown should call a referendum on the treaty, arguing that it is too close to the proposed EU constitution…

From Bloomberg (dated July 9, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends July 25, 2007 (BR/EU)

'Don't tell British about the EU treaty'
The new European Union treaty will mean "transfers of sovereignty" from Britain and Gordon Brown is right to hide the fact from the public, an EU leader admitted yesterday. Jean-Claude Juncker, Luxembourg's premier and leader of the bloc of 13 single currency members…said he supported public debate on the treaty - except in Britain…"Britain is different. Of course there will be transfers of sovereignty. But would I be intelligent to draw the attention of public opinion to this fact?" Mr Juncker, a supporter of a United States of Europe, described the June 23 deal signed by Tony Blair as an "objective success" for friends of the EU constitution…

From The Telegraph (London) (dated July 3, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends July 25, 2007 (BR/EU)

EU leaders agree on reform treaty
European Union leaders have reached agreement in Brussels on an outline of new rules to govern the 27-member bloc. At dawn on Saturday they announced a compromise to delay until 2014 a new voting system that reduces Poland's influence - the main stumbling block. Other proposals envisage a long-term president and a foreign affairs head. The new treaty, expected to be finalised later this year, preserves much of the planned EU constitution, which was rejected by voters in 2005. The treaty will need to be ratified by each of the EU's member states, before entering into force in mid-2009…

From BBC News (dated June 23, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends July 25, 2007 (EU/BR)

Secret New Plan for EU Superstate
Tony Blair wants to hand the European Union radical new powers in his last act as Prime Minister, it emerged today…

From the Daily Express (dated July 15, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends July 25, 2007 (EU/BR)

Back in the EUSSR
In the late 1980s the USSR, Ronald Reagan's "evil empire," imploded. America might soon be confronted with another evil empire…[with the] constitutional treaty…for transforming the European Union (EU) into a superstate…Exactly two years ago, this constitution was rejected in referendums in the Netherlands and France…Soon after the referendums it became apparent that the European politicians intended to ignore the people's verdict and proceed with their plans for constructing the superstate…The British, and in particular the English, are the most euroskeptic of all European peoples. If forced to choose, they seem prepared to opt for British sovereignty over the European Union. Some regard this as almost a criminal attitude. Last week, the president of Italy, Giorgio Napolitano, said that "those who are anti EU are terrorists," while his colleague Horst Kohler, the president of Germany, described the tactics of the "euroskeptics" as "populist, demagogic campaigning." It sounded almost as if Italy and Germany were blaming Britain for not having drawn lessons from the second World War, conveniently forgetting that it was England's love of freedom that saved Europe from dictators like Messrs. Napolitano's and Kohler's predecessors, Mussolini and Hitler. The latter, too, nursed dreams of European political unification. Liberty and democracy require limited governments, while supranationalism by definition tends toward unlimitedness. The former Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovsky refers to the EU as the "EUSSR." He does so, he explains, because the former USSR and the EU share the same goal: the obliteration of nations. "The European Union, like the Soviet Union, cannot be democratized," he says. If the EU becomes a genuine state it is bound to be an evil empire, because there is no European nation. "National loyalty is a form of neighborliness: It is loyalty to a shared home and to the people who have built it," says the conservative English philosopher Roger Scruton. Without this loyalty there is no freedom, because "national loyalties enable people to respect the sovereignty and the rights of the individual." By seeking to extinguish national loyalty, the EU also destroys freedom, accountability and democracy. The eurocracy aims to extinguish the old national loyalties of the European peoples, and put a cosmopolitan indifference in their place…

From Brussels Journal publisher Paul Belien in The Washington Times, reposted at The Brussels Journal (dated June 21, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends July 25, 2007 (EU/BR)

Monday view: The treaty beast is back to haunt us. And this time it's personal
If Europe's political leaders succeed in ramming through a barely disguised remake of the same European constitution rejected by the French and Dutch people, I for one will come off the fence after years of hesitation and join the fight for total British withdrawal from the Union…One would have thought that the French and Dutch had driven a stake through the heart of this animal. Commission chief José Manuel Barroso said as much. But no, Berlin has unwisely brought it back from the dead to haunt Europe. Unwise even for Germany, the great winner under the proposed voting structure. Mrs Merkel's démarche has already opened a feud with Poland, but it will not end there. Her letter suggested sneaking the Charter of Fundamental Rights into the text "by a short cross-reference having the same legal value". Why does this matter? Because the Charter gives the European Court (ECJ) jurisdiction over a raft of social and economic rights that are alien to our Common Law. It empowers Euro-judges to chip away at Britain's economic model, imposing Rheinland corporatism by the back door. We might as well turn the lights off in the City if the ECJ ever gets its claws into that. Beware of Europe's court, the unseen engine of EU federalism. For now it is confined to "community" matters: the single market, competition rules, and so on. It has no say on the wider fields of foreign affairs, defence, justice, and criminal matters, and little say on economic management. The text smashes the old structure. Everything becomes fair game, unless specifically exempted. Euro-judges would, for example, decide the meaning of Article 1.15 forbidding states from foreign policy and defence actions deemed "contrary to the Union's interest". The Falklands? Iraq? Forget it. Rulings would be final, beyond appeal. As a supreme court, the ECJ could strike down national laws much as America's Warren Court struck down US state laws in the heyday of judicial activism. The revived text endows the EU with the machinery of a quasi-sovereign power: a full-time president and foreign minister; a justice department; and a "legal personality" allowing it to negotiate treaties in its own name. The national veto is whittled down. Euro-MPs gain powers of the purse. Brussels extends its legislative primacy over security and justice, agriculture, fisheries, transport, energy, social policy, economic cohesion, and the environment. For an excellent guide, try The New Treaty published by Open Europe. Mrs Merkel's plan to slip this through as a mini-treaty is a return to the EU's "Monet method" of advance by stealth - except that this time the French and Dutch have already voted "No". It is far from clear that such a cynical coup can be pulled off, even if EU leaders agree to a relaunch this week. The details will have to be thrashed out over coming months, opening up a hornets' nest…

From Ambrose Evans-Pritchard in The Telegraph (London) (dated June 19, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends July 25, 2007 (EU/BR)

Mohammed likely to top British boys' names list by year-end
Mohammed will likely become the most popular name for baby boys in Britain by the end of the year, The Times reported on Wednesday, citing government data. Though official records from the Office for National Statistics list the spelling Mohammed 23rd in its yearly analysis of the top 3,000 names given to children, when all the different spellings of the name are taken into account, it ranks second, only behind Jack, according to The Times…

Agence France-Presse story at Breitbart.com (dated June 6, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends June 8, 2007 (BR/RE)

Britain 'isolated' over new treaty for Europe
At a pre-G8 meeting in Berlin, the German chancellor will warn Mr Blair that he will be under siege if he tries to defend Britain's sovereignty at a meeting on June 21 in Brussels - where details of a treaty will be thrashed out to replace the constitution that was rejected by French and Dutch voters two years ago…

From The Telegraph (London) (dated June 3, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends June 8, 2007 (EU/BR)

Brussels warns Poland and UK on EU constitution
European Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso has warned both Poland and the UK not to block attempts to agree a new treaty for the European Union…

From EUObserver.com (dated June 1, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends June 8, 2007 (EU/BR)

Scientists allowed to create hybrid embryos
Scientists will be allowed to create hybrid animal-human embryos for stem cell research after the Government dropped its opposition to the procedure. In what is seen by many as a U-turn, the Government published a draft bill that effectively sweeps away last year's ban…

From The Telegraph (London) (dated May 19, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends June 8, 2007 (BR/ST/MO)

Australian water crisis could be worse than thought
Water shortages facing Australia's drought-hit prime agricultural area might be worse than expected, the government was told on Wednesday, as river towns braced for unprecedented restrictions on water use…. Prime Minister John Howard in April urged Australians to pray for rain…

From Reuters (dated May 16, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends June 8, 2007 (BR/ND)

Tap-dancing toward a Euro constitution
Within days of the French and Dutch referendums, EU leaders had worked out a plan to bring back the constitution. I wrote an article here two years ago predicting how they would do it. First, they would shear off the paragraphs that restated the existing treaties: since these would remain in force, anyway, there was no need to rub voters' noses in them by including them in the new draft. Then, they would clip away the clauses that had been activated de facto in anticipation of the constitution's entry into force. Finally, they would change a few names - including, most significantly, that of the constitution itself. Sure enough, this is what they have done…

From British Conservative Member of the European Parliament Daniel Hannan in The Telegraph (London) (dated June 7, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends June 8, 2007 (EU/BR)

Continental Drift
Don’t say you weren’t warned. It was all there in Tony Blair’s very first speech as Labour leader. ‘Under my leadership,’ he told his Blackpool delegates in 1994, ‘I will never allow this country to be isolated or left behind in Europe.’ Ponder those words for a moment. There is no hint of conditionality in them. Blair was not arguing that participation in EU initiatives would benefit Britain; rather he saw it as an end in itself: a demonstration that Britain was a modern, outward-looking country…Now, as he prepares to leave the scene, he feels that his country has let him down…

From British Conservative Member of the European Parliament Daniel Hannan in a Spectator special supplement (dated May 12, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends June 8, 2007 (BR/EU)

Tsunami Swamped England 400 Years Ago, Study Says
A tsunami struck coastal England 400 years ago, causing the deadliest natural disaster in the history of the United Kingdom, new research suggests. The massive wave was responsible for a flood on January 30, 1607, that swamped the Bristol Channel in southwestern England, submerging more than 190 square miles (500 square kilometers) of land and killing some 2,000 people, the study says.…The U.K. remains at risk of another such disaster, which could be much more deadly, the researchers added…

From National Geographic News (dated May 7, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends May 9, 2007 (BR/ND)

Australian cities facing 'Big Dry' water shortages
Drought-stricken Australia faces the world's most extreme climate change challenge as millions of city dwellers try to cope with water shortages, according to the country's most recognised scientist. The government has already made the unprecedented declaration that farmers will receive no irrigation water from July in Australia's most fertile region if the country's worst drought in a century continues. Water restrictions have been imposed across the vast island continent and scientist Tim Flannery, named the 2007 Australian of the year for his pioneering environmental work, says the problem will only get worse. Flannery said the drought meant two of Australia's largest cities, Brisbane and Adelaide -- home to a combined total of almost three million people -- would run out of water by the year's end unless the so-called "Big Dry" ended…

Agence France-Presse story at Yahoo News (dated April 29, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends May 9, 2007 (BR/ND)

Blair seeks EU constitution by the 'back door'
Tony Blair was accused yesterday of preparing to introduce a scaled-down European constitution by the "back door" before he quits as Prime Minister this summer. The Conservatives and the UK Independence Party reacted angrily after Downing Street confirmed Mr Blair did not believe a referendum would be needed on a new European treaty expected to be agreed during his final days in office…

From The Telegraph (London) (dated April 24, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends May 9, 2007 (EU/BR)

Al-Qaeda ‘planning big British attack’
Al-Qaeda leaders in Iraq are planning the first “large-scale” terrorist attacks on Britain and other western targets with the help of supporters in Iran, according to a leaked intelligence report. Spy chiefs warn that one operative had said he was planning an attack on “a par with Hiroshima and Nagasaki” in an attempt to “shake the Roman throne”, a reference to the West. Another plot could be timed to coincide with Tony Blair stepping down as prime minister, an event described by Al-Qaeda planners as a “change in the head of the company”. The report, produced earlier this month and seen by The Sunday Times, appears to provide evidence that Al-Qaeda is active in Iran and has ambitions far beyond the improvised attacks it has been waging against British and American soldiers in Iraq…

From The Times (London) (dated April 22, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends May 9, 2007 (BR/WT)

Thousands of Britons leave country for Australia, Spain, France
Around 500 Britons a day are leaving the country, with Australia, Spain and France the most popular destinations, although far more new immigrants are arriving, official figures showed Friday…

Agence France-Presse story at Yahoo News (dated April 20, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends May 9, 2007 (BR/EU)

Europe: Majority supports strike on Iran
Over half of Europeans would support a preemptive military strike to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, a poll released last week by a London think-tank reports…

From The Jerusalem Post (dated April 8, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends May 9, 2007 (EU/BR/ME/WT)

Big Three strengthen grip on EU
The power of Europe’s Big Three — Britain, France and Germany — has increased rather than diminished after the expansion of the European Union to 27 members, according to an academic analysis of decision-making at the highest level…

From The Times (London) (dated April 6, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends May 9, 2007 (EU/BR)

The Stealth Constitution
Eurocrats want to prevent the people from derailing their political integration project -- in part by marketing their constitutional plans as just a few technical changes. Go home, people, their motto might be, nothing to see here, nothing to vote about. Sound familiar? In 2004, we were told that the constitution was just a "tidying up" exercise. At the time, British Prime Minister Tony Blair said he had no qualms about "commending the constitution to the country as a success and as a major step forward in creating the kind of Europe the British people want." He changed his mind a few months later, after French and Dutch voters rejected it, admitting that the constitution "did not reflect the concerns of ordinary people." There is little indication that the revived constitution would reflect these concerns any better. Yet once again we are being told that without a "mini-constitution" or "constitution lite" or whatever Europe's leaders like to call it, the EU would stop functioning. This is familiar scare-mongering…[German Chancellor] Merkel wants to present a program for a new constitutional treaty at the June EU summit. To that aim she floated the idea of simply "using different terminology without changing the legal substance" of the constitution -- constitution by stealth, in other words. According to the one-page document leaked to the press, the idea is to give the EU a "single legal personality" and full competence in foreign, justice, home and immigration affairs. Clearly, lessons have been learned from the previous shambles. They're just not the right ones…The plan is for a new treaty to be finalized under the French EU presidency in December 2008. That would be just in time for the European Parliament elections in 2009 and, probably, British general elections in the same year. Prime Minister Blair and his successor, almost certainly Gordon Brown, might want to be careful about what they are going to do in the next few weeks. For years now, we have seen the gradual transfer of sovereign powers from accountable governments to a largely unaccountable Brussels bureaucracy. If there were proposals on the table to roll back some of these powers…then there might actually be some popular interest in a new EU treaty. But every past EU treaty has acted as a harsh solvent on our national sovereignty, the bedrock of our freedom and democracy. That is why Europe's citizens should be given the opportunity to express their views on the next EU treaty in referendums…

From Conservative Member of the European Parliament for the East of England Geoffrey Van Orden in The Wall Street Journal (dated May 7, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends May 9, 2007 (EU/BR)

Al-Qaida Sleeper Cells Await
Day in and day out, there are new revelations about terrorist sleeper cells in the United Kingdom and other European countries…The law of averages would indicate the near-certainty of terrorist sleeper cells in the United States…

By United Press International and Washington Times editor Arnaud de Borchgrave (dated May 3, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends May 9, 2007 (US/BR/EU/RE/WT)

The Result of European Unification Will Be War
The EEC was put across as a free trade zone. I never voted for the creation of a supranational, unaccountable government that does not submit to the will of the people via an election. In fact, I did not vote at all. I have never had a say on whether I want my country — which no longer exists — to be a part of this. The EU has no mandate and never has. Now, Germany is a more apt comparison than you might realise. Bismarck conceived the unification of Germany as a means to prevent the German kingdoms from fighting each other. He began to implement it when those same kingdoms were on the verge of signing an unprecedented peace treaty; his manipulations caused a war that gave him the pretext to simply conquer those other kingdoms, or trick them in to treaties that irrevocably tied them to his Imperial Germany. He began with a customs union. The EU has not resorted to wars to implement itself, but it began in the same way, and with the same aims. The EU was conceived as a means to prevent another war like the Great War, but it was interrupted by the Second World War. By the close of that war the political landscape had so changed that the concept of the EU was obsolete before the first treaties were even signed. It is consequently an institution looking for a role, and it has since found that role by re-positioning itself as a counter to American ‘hegemony’, a second pole against the US’s presence in the world as a super-power. This is in itself a foolish proposition; historically it is more foolish still, because history demonstrates that it will cause more trouble than it is worth. Bismarck’s united Germany did become peaceful for a while, but that peace didn’t last long. The internal fractures of the new Imperial Germany soon started to cause strife and resentment amongst the people of that country. A solution was found in the redirection of the national angst toward external enemies. The eventual result was the great war. The result of that was World War 2. The ‘unification’ of the nations of Europe is the same thing on a much larger scale. It is perhaps no coincidence that incidents of anti-Americanism have risen sharply since the signing of Maastricht. The EU has placed itself in opposition to the United States. It has inveigled itself so deeply in to the lives of its ‘citizens’, so deeply embedded itself in to every aspect of life, that everything a person does is regulated in some way by the EU…None of this was done with the consent of Parliament. None was done with the consent of the people of this nation…Sooner or later the sheer volume of regulations will start to affect people culturally. Our culture is slowly being eroded and destroyed by this vile institution, our national identities removed, our freedoms erased, and the end result? Inevitably, it will be war, but before that will be a morass of dull, lifeless existence for millions of people shorn of everything that once made their nations great. What price the ability to spend the same coin in 20 countries?...

Quote from Englishman Archonix at Gates of Vienna reposted at The Brussels Journal (dated May 1, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends May 9, 2007 (EU/BR/WT)

Merkel’s Letter Could Change the Course of the [EU Constitution Struggle]
I am clutching in my hot, trembling hands the most extraordinary document I have come across in eight years of Euro-politics. It is a letter from the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, to her fellow EU heads of government. In it, she proposes a scheme to bring back the constitution under a new name – or, as she artlessly puts it, “to use different terminology without changing the legal substance”. Now this, in itself, is not surprising. Many of us have suspected all along that the Eurocrats would try to bring back the constitution surreptitiously: I have written as much in these pages. What IS shocking is the brazenness. Mrs Merkel flagrantly admits that she wants to preserve intact the content of the European constitution, making only “the necessary presentational changes”… Let us be clear: the European Constitution amounts to a constitutional revolution, perhaps the most far-reaching since the civil and religious upheavals of the 17th century. This revolution is taking place, not as the result of popular insurrection or foreign occupation, but because the governing party is abusing its majority…

From Daniel Hannan at The Brussels Journal (dated April 27, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends May 9, 2007 (EU/BR)

How Not to Teach Children About Sex
British authorities promote sex education programmes that would make a sailor blush - and achieve record rates of disease and pregnancy…

From British journalist William Keenan (dated April 4, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends May 9, 2007 (BR/MO)

Merkel uses Berlin declaration to renew EU treaty push
European Parliament chief Poettering reminded leaders that MEPs want "the substance of the constitution - including our common values - adopted before the European Parliament elections in 2009." Italy's prime minister Romano Prodi, who spoke as the leader of the country where the Rome treaty was signed, gave the strongest pro-constitution speech. It was also in Rome where the disputed EU constitution was signed in 2004. "To continue building, we now need new rules, but not starting from zero," he said. "The treaty signed in Rome in October 2004 forms a very solid basis... a text signed by the 27 heads of state and ratified by 18 countries." But the pro-constitution speeches do not change the opposition to the text in Warsaw, Prague, The Hague and London…

From EUObserver (dated March 25, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends April 2, 2007 (EU/BR)

Blair's Secret EU President Plan
Tony Blair is secretly backing plans to create a permanent President of Europe, in a move that could see him go head to head for the job with bitter rival Jacques Chirac…

From Daily Express (London) (dated March 25, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends April 2, 2007 (EU/BR)

Commerce chief pushes for 'North American integration'
While the Bush administration insists the controversial Security and Prosperity Partnership is just a dialogue with Canada and Mexico, a State Department cable released to WND shows Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez pressing to implement major trilateral initiatives to help "capture the vision of North American integration." The cable was among some 150 pages of State Department SPP documents recently released to WND under a Freedom of Information Act request. Howard Phillips, who has formed a coalition to block development of a "North American Union" and formation of NAFTA superhighways, told WND the document "makes clear that the agenda of SPP is to pursue major economic integration that redefines U.S. businesses into a 'North American' definition"…

From author Jerome Corsi at WorldNetDaily (dated March 24, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends April 2, 2007 (US/LA/BR)

EU-style union coming to a continent near you
A memo signed by Department of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff implements a controversial program condemned by critics as a precursor to a European Union-style partnership with Mexico and Canada. The document shows the Security and Prosperity Partnership, or SPP, is being directed at the highest level of the Bush administration, says the public interest group Judicial Watch, which obtained it and other documents through a Freedom of Information Act request…

From WorldNetDaily (dated March 21, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends April 2, 2007 (US/LA/BR)

The smell of irresolution
Here's a puzzle: Why would Al Qaeda choose the past several days, just as Democrats in Congress were voting to run up a white flag and commit the United States to defeat in Iraq, to launch a bloody wave of terrorist atrocities?... For that matter, why would Iran have chosen this moment to seize 15 British sailors and marines? One of the hostages was forced to write a letter urging the British government "to start withdrawing our forces from Iraq and let them determine their own future." But Britain has been withdrawing its forces from Iraq, reducing troop levels from 40,000 in 2003 to just 7,100 as of February. Prime Minister Tony Blair recently announced that 1,600 more troops will be pulled out this spring. So what was the point of Iran's unprovoked ambush? The answer in both cases is that this is how totalitarian aggressors react to faintheartedness… Six years after Sept. 11, and so many people still refuse to absorb this fundamental fact of life…

From Boston Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby at Jewish World Review (dated April 2, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends April 2, 2007 (US/BR/WT)

The Mid-Life Crisis of the EU
The EU's champions claim its great achievement is to have kept the peace of Europe. "Sixty years of peace means that the image of the EU as a bastion against war is losing its resonance," said Jose Manuel Barroso, head of the European Commission, the executive arm that sits in Brussels. Intending no disrespect to Barroso, it was not the EU that kept Europe secure and at peace. America kept the Red Army from the Elbe and the Rhine. America saved Western Europe from the fate of the Hungarians in 1956, the Czechs in 1968 and the Poles in 1981. America pulled the British and French chestnuts out of the Balkan fires of the 1990s. German-French amity is a product of statesmanship, but also of the defeat of France in 1940 and the reduction of Germany to rubble by the American, British and Soviet armies in 1944-1945. The 50th anniversary of the EU brought to the fore as many questions as telegrams of congratulations. Quo vadis? Where is Europe going?...

From columnist Pat Buchanan at RealClearPolitics (dated March 30, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends April 2, 2007 (EU/BR/US)

Mothballing the Fleet
Tony Blair’s getting angrier every day. But if past Iranian hostage takings are an indication, he may be upset for a while. The American-embassy hostages were held for 444 days, and the Israeli soldiers kidnapped last year by Iran’s Hezbollah puppets still aren’t free. Blair is threatening to escalate to a “different phase,” but Iran’s leadership knows something that most Americans don’t. Two months ago, Britain’s government announced plans to mothball almost half its naval fleet due to defense-budget cuts. Much of its existing navy is already so degraded; it would take over a year to get into action. According to the British newspaper, the Daily Telegraph, senior naval officers say that the cuts “will turn Britain’s once-proud Navy into nothing more than a coastal defense force.” In fact, the British naval forces have been so neglected; the U.K. probably couldn’t pull off the Falkland Islands mission today. The world’s fifth-largest economy now supports an army that ranks 28th in size. What are they thinking? The 9/11 attacks should have been a wake-up call to our allies — but they seem to have had a tranquilizing effect instead…

From former U.S. Senator Fred Thompson (R-TN) at National Review Online (dated March 28, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends April 2, 2007 (ME/BR/WT)

Gesture Politics: The EU reacts to rising discontent
Last week the Czech president dismissed the Berlin Declaration, which endorses the "social model" and its associated labor market inflexibility. But most European leaders want to push ahead to a politically integrated Europe and to stick to existing policies in doing so. They can ignore voter discontent about issues such as immigration because the EU has what is called a "democratic deficit." They seem to like it that way. Their response to the defeat of the Euro-Constitution in referendums two years ago was to introduce it piecemeal under rules that don't need voter approval…

From National Review editor at large John O’Sullivan (dated March 27, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends April 2, 2007 (EU/BR)

50 years of surrender to the EU
One of the subtlest strategies employed by the EU, as it has gradually taken over more and more power from national governments, has been the way it has left each country's national institutions in place. Monarchies and presidencies, national parliaments, civil services and legal systems have all been left standing, looking outwardly as if not very much has changed. Yet over the decades they have all been gradually hollowed out from within. Today, over vast areas of each country's national life, the power to decide policies and make laws no longer lies in national capitals. It has been transferred to our new 'supranational' centre of government in Brussels. And the clever thing is how successfully most of this has been kept out of sight…

From the Daily Mail (London) (dated March 23, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends April 2, 2007 (EU/BR)

Al-Qa'eda 'plotted to kill Blair in front of Queen'
Tony Blair defied an assassination threat from al-Qa'eda to take part in the Queen's Golden Jubilee celebrations in central London, it can be revealed for the first time…

From The Telegraph (London) (dated February 27, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends March 1, 2007 (BR/WT)

Scientists triumph in battle over ban on hybrid embryos
Plans to outlaw the creation of human-animal hybrid embryos for potentially life-saving stem cell research are to be dropped after a revolt by scientists. The proposed government ban on fusing human DNA with animal eggs, which promises insights into incurable conditions such as Alzheimer’s and motor neuron disease, will be abandoned because of concerns among senior ministers that it will damage British science. While ministers will not endorse the research in full yet, they are no longer seeking legislation to prohibit it…

From The Times (London) (dated February 27, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends March 1, 2007 (BR/ST/MO)

Secret report: Terror threat worst since 9/11
The terrorist threat facing Britain from home-grown al-Qaeda agents is higher than at any time since the September 11 attacks in 2001, secret intelligence documents reveal. The number of British-based Islamic terrorists plotting suicide attacks against "soft" targets in this country is far greater than the Security Services had previously believed, the government paperwork discloses. It is thought the plotters could number more than 2,000…

From The Telegraph (London) (dated February 25, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends March 1, 2007 (BR/WT)

Osama targets Prince Harry
Osama bin Laden personally has targeted Iraq-bound Prince Harry, saying he is wanted "dead or alive"…Code-breakers for MI6, Britain's external intelligence agency, have cracked al-Qaida's secret communications system and discovered Prince Harry is named as a prime target for the terror network when he goes on active service to Iraq. The MI6 code-breakers also have discovered the first real evidence in over a year that bin Laden is alive and personally has authorized the capture of the young prince – third in line to the throne – "dead or alive"…

From WorldNetDaily (dated February 23, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends March 1, 2007 (BR/WT)

Secret plan to reunite Catholics, Anglicans under Pope
Radical proposals to reunite Anglicans with the Roman Catholic Church under the leadership of the Pope are to be published this year, according to a statement leaked to the media today. The proposals have been agreed by senior bishops of both churches…

London Times story in The Australian (dated February 19, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends March 1, 2007 (EU/BR/RE)

Tiny Minority of Extremists Update
"84,000 Canadian Muslims think it's justifiable to behead our democratically elected prime minister and blow up the very symbol and centre of our democracy!"…

From Jihad Watch (dated February 19, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends March 1, 2007 (BR/RE/WT)

Diss a 'gay'? Go to jail!
Two Christians in Australia have been indicted for criticizing Islam, and another for criticizing Zionism. A filmmaker has been threatened with arrest for using the word "homosexual" rather than "gay." Now a German priest faces jail time for publicly criticizing abortionists, and in Holland, "fornicators" and "adulterers" are protected classes and cannot be criticized. All courtesy of the concept of federal "hate crimes" legislation, which unless defeated soon could be mandatory in the United States, warns a rising chorus of critics…

From WorldNetDaily (dated February 15, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends March 1, 2007 (BR/EU/US/RE/MO)

Canada's Jihadist Fifth Column
The fact that some 84,000 Muslims living in a western democratic country sympathize with the aims of these 18 would-be jihadists should not come as a surprise. Their number corresponds to the ten to 15 percent of the one billion Muslims worldwide who, experts say, support jihad. So even if one accepts the lower ten percent figure, that makes one hundred million people -- more than the membership of the Communist and Nazi parties combined -- who wish violent death upon the infidel. Not an insignificant number, to say the least…

From FrontPage Magazine columnist Stephen Brown (dated March 1, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends March 1, 2007 (BR/GI/RE/WT)

Germany’s EU Plan: The Constitution Is Dead, Long Live the ‘Basic Law’
The speaker [in the European Parliament Feb. 13] was the President of the Parliament Hans-Gert Poettering putting forward what he would like to achieve in his period of office which runs until 2009 and the European elections….What got me is when through the simultaneous translation he said “Treaties are to be obeyed”…Today I got the [pre-prepared] English transcript of the text from the Parliament interpreters… “We intend to help to ensure that under the German Council Presidency a road map and a mandate are agreed at the summit in Brussels on 21 and 22 June, as the outcome of which full implementation of the substantive core of the European Constitution will be in place by the next European Parliament in 2009. I would like to remind you that the Constitutional Treaty was signed by all 27 governments. Of course we have to respect the results of the referenda.” This is where things get really serious. Please note the comment about the 2004 signing of the Constitution in Rome. Essentially when a head of government signs up, really that is all there is there. As far as I can gather – and yes I do have this on good authority – the plan is as this: Over the last few weeks German diplomats have been subtle arm twisting to get a text together for the Berlin March 25, 50th anniversary signing of a solemn declaration by the 27 heads of government. This solemn declaration is 95% written and is a great waft of well meaning guff about the continents liberal tolerant history and how all governments in the 27 are terribly nice, and how we all love fluffy bunny wunnys and kiddiewinks and motherhood and apple pie and so forth. Then on the evening of the Brussels Council Meeting and International Woman's Day (8th March) at a dinner in Brussels the final phrases will be included. This phrase will commit the signatories to the ratification of a ‘basic Law’ which will replace the Constitution. It will be short, much less that 50 pages unlike the Constitution that weighed in at well over 300. The word Constitution will be expunged. It will, as Mr Poettering points out, contain the substantive aspects of the Constitution including the Foreign Minister, the Defence Minister, the end of vetoes in 47 separate areas of policy, and so on…Poettering went on, “But regardless of that {the referenda results}: If a change of government in a country of the European Union calls into question what has been agreed, not only is society split in that nation, but our continent, which is quite complicated enough, is increasingly incapacitated. We must commit to our European legal principles: pacta sunt servenda – treaties are to be honoured.” {not obeyed, but maybe the interpreter was more accurate than the prewritten text, I don’t know} Eh, run that past me again. If a country votes for a government that opposes the Constitution – and yes he does mean the UK here, wake up at the back – then he is suggesting that the government, you know, the democratically elected one, has no right to recind a previous government’s position…

From Elaib Harvey at The Brussels Journal (dated February 14, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends March 1, 2007 (EU/BR)

EU divisions on constitution grow
Despite Germany's efforts to conduct negotiations on the EU constitution discreetly, the rifts between member states are spilling out into the open. The UK Times reported on Thursday that London will refuse to sign up to any institutional changes if it does not secure a pledge that there will be no revival of the EU constitution. According to the newspaper, prime minister Tony Blair only wants a mini-treaty that would include changes to the voting system and introducing a more permanent president of the bloc instead of the current rotating system…

From EUObserver.com (dated February 1, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends February 5, 2007 (EU/BR)

Rifts emerge over EU's 50th birthday declaration
Political divisions are emerging over the EU's 50th birthday declaration, with the European Commission set to propose an explicit reference to the need for a constitutional solution and with Germany pushing a social agenda…Poland is meanwhile set to reignite the debate on a reference to the union's Christian heritage in the EU constitution - now proposing to include "God" in the anniversary declaration…

From EUObserver.com (dated February 1, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends February 5, 2007 (EU/BR)

Study: Anti-Semitic attacks hit record level in Britain in 2006
Anti-Semitic attacks reached record levels in Britain last year and peaked during the conflict in Lebanon, a study showed Thursday. Race hate incidents - ranging from death threats to physical assault - rose by more than 30 percent to almost 600. "These are the worst figures we have had in the 23 years since we have been monitoring it," said Mark Gardner of the Community Security Trust …British Jewish leaders say attacks have risen steadily since 2000, with British Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks warning that "a tsunami of anti-Semitism" was sweeping across Europe…

Reuters story in Haaretz (Tel Aviv) (dated February (dated January 1, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends February 5, 2007 (BR/EU/RE)

40% of young UK Muslims want sharia law: Over a third say conversion from Islam should be 'punished by death'
[A recent survey] found evidence that young Muslims held more fundamentalist beliefs on key social and political issues than those over age 55. Forty percent of Muslims between aged 16 to 24 said they would prefer to live under sharia law in the UK, compared to only 17 percent of those over 55. Thirty-six percent of the younger group said a Muslim who converted to another religion should be "punished by death," while only 19 percent of the older group agreed. Thirteen percent of young Muslims surveyed said they "admired" organizations such as al-Qaida and others who were prepared to "fight the West"…

From WorldNetDaily (dated January 31, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends February 5, 2007 (BR/RE/ME)

Canadian City Councillor Fined $1000 for Saying Homosexuality “not Normal or Natural”
A Catholic city councillor in Kamloops, British Columbia, who was himself the victim of the crime of vandalism due to his faith, has been forced to apologize and pay a homosexual activist couple $1000. The couple filed a complaint with the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal which was accepted and was to go to the hearing stage. Strangely, it was councillor who was shown true discrimination worthy of a human rights complaint. In June, the councillor opposed a homosexual pride proclamation, after which his barber shop was vandalized with "Homophobia Die" scrawled on the door of his business…

From LifeSiteNews.com (dated January 19, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends February 5, 2007 (BR/MO)

Sleeper Cells in the United States and Canada
There is every reason to suspect that we will endure suicide missions by Islamist sleeper cells. They are already in place. They are waiting for the right time. I know this from experience. I have worked over 15 years as a U.S. Federal Agent, a U.S. State Department Arabic linguist, and the first civilian Federal Agent deployed into Iraq at the start of Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003. Since returning from Iraq I have been involved in terrorism analysis, specifically the mindset of terrorists. During my extensive research on sleeper cells I have talked with hundreds of people from the Middle East from all walks of life, and have talked with Iraqi Government officials, Iraqi military, and Iraqi police officers. In addition I have interviewed numerous counter-terrorism specialists in the U.S. and abroad. In the last year alone I have trained over 4000 U.S. Law Enforcement officers in Basic Investigative Arabic and counter-terrorism. The conclusion of my research is the title of this article…

From Dave Gaubatz at American Thinker (dated February 2, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends February 5, 2007 (US/BR/RE/WT)

Britain will never join an EU army
There is now no doubt that the German presidency intends to resurrect the corpse of the European Constitution. Part of the debate that will be reawakened will be about the EU's defence pretensions and the long-held desire of some Europeans to diminish the influence of America on the continent…Britain can never allow its troops to be sent into action by any supra-national body, still less one with no democratic accountability. This must remain the exclusive political territory of a sovereign British government. It cannot and must not be a role for the EU. But notwithstanding these problems, the Euro-defence train rolls on and we must make our position clear. Too often we have been involved in the early stages of clearly integrationist projects, in the vain hope that they will change direction later. A prime example is the European Defence Agency (Eda). While the Eda is officially about rationalising defence research and development across Europe, there are many who see it as an essential first step towards a single EU defence procurement programme, itself a precursor of an integrated EU defence force. There is nothing wrong with trying to avoid uneconomic research duplication, but the exclusion of Norway and Turkey from the process suggests that it is about EU rather than European defence…The EU may have a role in acting as a delivery mechanism for Nato in some circumstances: it must not be allowed to replace Nato. That would not be in Britain's national interest and it is that national interest that will shape the defence policy of the next Conservative government…

From British Shadow Defence Secretary Liam Fox (dated February 2, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends February 5, 2007 (BR/EU/WT)

Plans for Western 'Mega-Mosque' Rouse Concerns
London is set to become home to the largest mosque outside the Middle East, as controversial plans continue to move forward for a huge development in East London. Already England’s capital city contains more mosques than any other in the Western world, and plans have been continuously rumored for an enormous modern Muslim complex which would create an Islamic village in London’s East End. At the proposed site, a simple and small mosque currently stands, which is set to make way for a 17-acre center for up to 70,000 Muslim worshippers…Although the mosque would dwarf many of England’s Christian cathedrals, it is not the size of the proposals that is the main concern, but rather the group behind the proposed establishment…The group behind the development is called Tablighi Jamaat. According to the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Tablighi Jamaat has ties to al-Qaeda. In addition, the shoe bomber Richard Reid was associated with Tablighi Jamaat, as were two of the 7/7 bombers who struck London's public transport system in 2005…

From The Christian Post (dated January 10, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends January 18, 2007 (BR/RE/WT)

The Truth About Londinistan
Should the warnings in these books be dismissed as right-wing hysteria, or is the danger in Europe so great as to warrant the charged language? Put another way, is "Londonistan" just a catchy title for a book, or is the Islamification of Britain already well under way? The facts paint the truest—and most alarming—picture…

From Aaron Hanscom at FrontPage Magazine (dated January 18, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends January 18, 2007 (BR/RE/MO/WT)

The Strange Death of the Royal Navy: Brits Will Now Rely On Europeans For Their Defense
A 400-year epoch of world history is about to draw to a close. If Britain's current Labor government has its way, Britain's Royal Navy will mothball at least 13, and perhaps as many as 19, of its remaining 44 ships, or nearly half its effective fleet. With one bureaucratic stroke, the Ministry of Defense will end a naval tradition reaching back to Sir Francis Drake - reducing the Royal Navy, which 40 years ago was still the second-largest fleet in the world, to the size of navies of countries like Indonesia and Turkey. This decision, of course, has to be set against the background of Britain's decades-long decline as a world power. But it also reflects a struggle for the soul of Great Britain that has been going since World War II: Is Britain part of an English-speaking, Atlantic-based strategic alliance that includes the United States and Canada? Or is it part of Europe as envisioned by technocrats in Paris, Brussels and Berlin? Next month's final decision on whether to scrap the Royal Navy may supply us with the answer. Because the Blair government's drastic plans include more than taking existing ships out of commission. The service's entire future as a blue-water navy (that is, a navy capable of operations outside Britain's own waters) may be forfeit…

From author Arthur Herman in the New York Post (dated January 14, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends January 18, 2007 (BR/EU/WT)

Superbug outbreak imminent, MDs say
A superbug that causes infections resulting in lesions, bleeding pneumonia and, in rare cases, flesh-eating disease is poised to "emerge in force" across Canada, infectious disease experts warn. An epidemic of community-associated methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or CA-MRSA, is established in the U.S. and beginning to entrench itself here…

From The Toronto Star (dated January 3, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends January 10, 2007 (BR/ND)

What if Britain HADN’T joined the EU?
This year marks the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Rome, which launched what was eventually to become the European Union…Perhaps it may be timely therefore to mark this anniversary in our own way, by asking what Britain would be like today if, all those decades ago, our then-political leaders, such as Harold Macmillan and Edward Heath, had never taken us into it in the first place. If we had never entered the 'Common Market' back in 1973, would we now, as the Europhiles like to tell us, be just an impoverished little island standing sadly alone on the edge of Europe, gazing in envy at the success of the great project we were so foolish not to join? Or is it possible that we might in 2007 be living in a Britain significantly richer, happier, freer, more democratic, more selfrespecting and more at ease with itself than it is today?...

From Christopher Booker in the Daily Mail (dated January 6, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends January 10, 2007 (BR/EU)

EU ‘Trying to Brainwash Children in Classroom’
Row erupts over propaganda masquerading as fact…

From Yorkshire Post political editor Simon McGee (dated January 3, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends January 10, 2007 (BR/EU)

Will Scotland break up the U.K. in '07?
2007 includes two important events in the Scottish calendar that, taken together, have the potential to create an enormous headache. The first is the 300th anniversary of the Act of Union that formed the United Kingdom of Great Britain. Usually, it would be celebrated with pomp and circumstance. The second event is the election in May for the devolved Scottish parliament. On present trends, this may make the Scottish National Party the single largest party in Scotland. And Alex Salmond, the SNP leader, has promised an early referendum on breaking up the union and creating an independent Scotland. Thus, Scotland might both celebrate the 1707 Act of Union and dissolve it in the same year. What are the trends that make this a real possibility? Most obvious is the growing support within Scotland for independence. Opinion polls show more Scots favor independence than oppose it -- and recent ones have shown outright if narrow majorities (52 percent) for full independence…Opinion polls have shown growing English support for the breakup of the United Kingdom and independence for England…

From John O’Sullivan in the Chicago Sun-Times (dated January 2, 2007)
Posted to Current World News & Trends January 10, 2007 (BR)

How the West Could Lose
After defeating fascists and communists, can the West now defeat the Islamists? On the face of it, its military preponderance makes victory seem inevitable. Even if Tehran acquires a nuclear weapon, Islamists have nothing like the military machine the Axis deployed in World War II, nor the Soviet Union during the cold war. What do the Islamists have to compare with the Wehrmacht or the Red Army? The SS or Spetznaz? The Gestapo or the KGB? Or, for that matter, to Auschwitz or the gulag? Yet, more than a few analysts, including myself, worry that it's not so simple. Islamists (defined as persons who demand to live by the sacred law of Islam, the Sharia) might in fact do better than the earlier totalitarians. They could even win. That's because, however strong the Western hardware, its software contains some potentially fatal bugs. Three of them – pacifism, self-hatred, complacency – deserve attention…

From Daniel Pipes in the New York Sun, reposted at The Middle East Forum (dated December 26, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends January 10, 2007 (US/BR/ME/WT)

Christmas terror strike 'highly likely'
The risk from terrorists in the Christmas period is "very high indeed" and the struggle against Muslim terrorism will last at least 30 years, John Reid, the Home Secretary, said yesterday. Mr Reid echoed the view of MI5 that there are around 30 major terrorist plots under way and the terrorists only "have to be lucky once"…

From The Telegraph (London) (dated December 12, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends December 12, 2006 (BR/WT)

Britain stops talk of 'war on terror'
Foreign Office has asked ministers to ditch the phrase invented by Bush to avoid stirring up tensions within the Islamic world…

From The Guardian’s Observer (Manchester, England) (dated December 10, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends December 12, 2006 (BR/WT)

Everyone must love the EU... says Tony Blair
A multi-million pound propaganda war to force the British people to love the European Union and Brussels bureaucrats is to be launched by Tony Blair as part of his legacy as Prime Minister, it has been revealed. The operation to overcome strong opposition to the EU in Britain and soften them up in the event of fresh moves to forge closer links with Brussels was secretly agreed by Mr Blair and his Ministers at last week's Cabinet meeting. Details of the plan, obtained by The Mail on Sunday, show how the Prime Minister is so frustrated at his failure to persuade voters that the EU is a good thing, he is to spend a fortune from public funds in a final attempt to brainwash them before he resigns next year…

From the Daily Mail (dated December 2, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends December 12, 2006 (BR/EU)

Britain wants UK break up, poll shows
The United Kingdom should be broken up and Scotland and England set free as independent nations, according to a huge number of voters on both sides of the border…

From The Telegraph (London) (dated November 27, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends December 12, 2006 (BR)

Wave of Suicides Follows Drought Down Under
Farmers in Australia are suffering their fifth year of continuous drought -- and the summer hasn't even started yet. Now, farms along the Murray River have been cut off, and the government is sending in therapists to help suicidal farmers…

From Der Spiegel (Germany) (dated November 21, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends December 12, 2006 (BR/ND)

The threat from within
We are now less likely to be attacked by international terrorists than by homegrown American citizens, self-radicalized individuals who are members of groups inspired by al Qaeda propaganda. The threat is from second- and third-generation children of immigrants, fluent in English and accustomed to American society but using the legal rights of U.S. citizenship to rebel from within...

From US News & World Report editor and publisher Mort Zuckerman (dated December 6, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends December 12, 2006 (US/BR/WT)

It would be folly to divide the United Kingdom
Are we content to shred the Union flag which, across the world, once stood for justice and liberty? Apparently so…

From The Telegraph (London) (dated November 26, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends December 12, 2006 (BR)

Blair - we must work with 'Axis of Evil' states
The first cracks in the united front over Iraq between Tony Blair and President Bush appeared last night as the Prime Minister offered Iran and Syria the prospect of dialogue over the future of Iraq and the Middle East…

From The Times (London) (dated November 13, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends November 17, 2006 (US/BR/ME/WT)

Terrorists are recruiting in our schools, says MI5 boss
Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller said Islamic militants linked to al-Qa'eda were recruiting teenagers to carry out suicide attacks and will use chemical, biological or nuclear weapons if they get the chance…

From The Telegraph (London) (dated November 11, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends November 17, 2006 (BR/MO)

MI5 tracking '30 UK terror plots'
MI5 knows of 30 terror plots threatening the UK and is keeping 1,600 individuals under surveillance, the security service's head has said. Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller warned the threat was "serious" and "growing". She said future attacks could be chemical or nuclear and that many of the plots were linked to al-Qaeda…

From BBC News (dated November 10, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends November 17, 2006 (BR/WT)

Blair's desperate new plan for the Middle East
Now Saddam has been displaced by his former allies in the West, and — with bizarre irony — the Iranian regime that was his old nemesis may be invited in with Syria to carve up the spoils of his country. This approach, in which two countries once branded by the Bush White House as unambiguously evil miraculously become "part of the solution", defies any credible logic except that of ignominious desperation. It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that Washington and London are now so eager for a face-saving formula that would enable them to wash their hands of Iraq and its apparently intractable problems that they are prepared to retreat from positions which they had declared, only weeks ago, to be principled and unflinching. Instead of delivering ultimatums to Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on his nuclear ambitions, Britain and America are to offer him an invitation to play a larger and more influential role in global politics…

From The Telegraph (London) (dated November 14, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends November 17, 2006 (US/BR/ME/WT)

Is Prince Charles a Convert to Islam?
In a 1997 Middle East Quarterly article titled "Prince Charles of Arabia," Ronni L. Gordon and David M. Stillman looked at evidence that Britain's Prince Charles might be a secret convert to Islam. They shifted through his public statements (defending Islamic law, praising the status of Muslim women, seeing in Islam a solution for Britain's ailments) and actions (setting up a panel of twelve "wise men" to advise him on Islamic religion and culture), then concluded that, "should Charles persist in his admiration of Islam and defamation of his own culture," his accession to the throne will indeed usher in a "different kind of monarchy." All this comes to mind on reading an article titled "Charles Breaks Fast with the Faithful in Muscat" in today's Dubai-based Gulf News, which reports on some of Charles' activities during his current five-day visit to Oman…

From Mideast expert Daniel Pipes (dated November 9, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends November 17, 2006 (BR/RE)

Australia Senate Lifts Ban on Cloning
Australia's Senate narrowly voted to end the country's four-year ban on cloning human embryos for stem cell research, ruling Tuesday that the potential for medical breakthroughs outweighed moral doubts. The decision - a rare conscience vote in a country where lawmakers are expected to follow the party line - sets the stage for the ban to be lifted entirely. The measure now goes to Australia's House of Representatives, but lawmakers had expected the Senate to pose the biggest hurdle…

Associated Press story in the Pittsburg Post-Gazette (dated November 7, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends November 8, 2006 (BR/MO)

Australian drought 'worst in 1,000 years': expert
The world's driest inhabited continent was in the grip of the worst drought in 1,000 years, a river management expert told Australia's political leaders Tuesday…

Agence France-Presse story at TerraDaily (dated November 7, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends November 8, 2006 (BR/ND)

Blair bucks U.S. on Saddam execution
Tony Blair said Monday he opposes the death penalty for Saddam Hussein — a reluctant admission that on this issue, the British prime minister stands by colleagues in the European Union and not with his American allies. But EU opposition to the sentence seems to be more a reaffirmation of principles than a serious challenge that could affect the imposition of the sentence…

Associated Press story at Yahoo News (dated November 6, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends November 8, 2006 (BR/ME/WT)

UK al-Qaida man 'hoped to kill thousands'
The British al-Qaida terrorist Dhiren Barot plotted to carry out a series of "massive explosions" in the UK and US with the aim of killing thousands of people, a court was told today…Today - the first day of a two-day hearing prior to sentencing - the prosecution gave the court fuller details of the 34-year-old's plans to carry out attacks, including setting off a radioactive "dirty bomb" in the UK. Barot had made reconnaissance trips to the US in 2000 and 2001, before the September 11 attacks, and details of plans to attack financial institutions in New York, Newark and Washington were later found on a computer, the court heard. Another of his key plots involved detonating three limousines packed with gas cylinders and explosives in underground car parks at unspecified locations in Britain…

From The Guardian (Manchester, England) (dated November 6, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends November 8, 2006 (US/BR/WT)

Islamic teaching could resolve world problems -- Prince Charles
Prince Charles Tuesday said that the world problems could be resolve by following Islamic teachings, as Islam is a religion of peace and brotherhood…He said that clash of civilizations could be averted by following the teaching of Islam and Quraan…

From Kuwait News Agency (dated October 31, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends November 8, 2006 (BR/RE/MO)

'King' Charles, the defender of faiths
Prince Charles plans to include a multi-faith ceremony in his coronation, it was claimed last night. He has told courtiers that he wants a separate service involving Muslims, Jews and Buddhists to show he represents people of all religions. This means that Charles will effectively be crowned twice. The first ceremony will be a Christian coronation in Westminster Abbey in which he will be made King "by the grace of God". But, turning his back on 1,000 years of tradition, he will insist on a second service in Westminster Hall…It also emerged last night that the Prince is insisting his wife Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, should become Queen when he becomes King…

From the Daily Express (London) (dated October 26, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends November 8, 2006 (BR/RE/MO)

Britain now No 1 al-Qaida target - anti-terror chiefs
Officials say group sees July 7 attacks as 'just the beginning' of UK campaign…

From The Guardian (Manchester, England) (dated October 19, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends November 8, 2006 (BR/RE/WT)

Will the Union see its 300th birthday?
Is the United Kingdom heading for fragmentation with the secession of Scotland from the Union, even as it prepares to celebrate its 300th anniversary next year?...

From Alan Cochrane in The Telegraph (London) (dated October 25, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends November 8, 2006 (BR)

Britain must regain a pride in its identity, Chief Rabbi warns
A crisis of national and social identity is undermining Britain's efforts to integrate its immigrant population, according to the Chief Rabbi. Sir Jonathan Sacks told The Sunday Telegraph that multiculturalism had led to segregation and a country that was no longer confident of what it stood for. It needed to regain a sense of pride in being British, he said, but must be less afraid to allow ethnic minorities to contribute to society, or risk marginalising them…

From The Telegraph (London) (dated September 17, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends September 22, 2006 (BR/MO)

New map of Britain that makes Kent part of France...and it's a German idea
For centuries the people of Kent have called their county the Garden of England. So they might find it quite a surprise that - according to the European Union at least - they are actually part of France. Along with next-door Sussex, Kent has been rolled in with the Calais area on a map drawn up for Brussels. The counties now belong to the "Trans-Manche region". Under the plans from German cartographers, the East of England has also been shoehorned into a new region, which includes Scandinavia. The Western side of Britain has been lumped together with Ireland and the Atlantic coasts of France, Spain and Portugal. The Tories accused the EU of plotting to undermine nation states and even "wipe Britain off the map". They warned that the German government wants to make the downgrading of national borders a key plank of its presidency of the EU next year - despite the rejection of the European Constitution by voters…

From The Daily Mail (London) (dated September 4, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends September 22, 2006 (EU/BR)

Britons could all too soon become slaves of Europe
We have been lulled into a dangerous sense of complacency towards the evils capable of being inflicted upon us, our country and our way of life by the EU. Our proposed membership of the euro is, it seems, a dead letter. The French and the Dutch buried the EU constitution more than a year ago. However, something that could prove even more poisonous to our liberties than either of those anti-democratic impositions could be about to be foisted on us. This Friday, in Tampere in Finland, there will be a meeting of EU interior and justice ministers. Up for debate is the matter of introducing qualified majority voting (QMV) on criminal justice matters: or, to put it more plainly, surrendering our veto on these. The potential for damage to our freedoms if this happens is awesome: the end of habeas corpus, a threat to trial by jury and the capability of the EU to interfere in hitherto sovereign matters such as sentencing policy are but three of the consequences should our veto go…With the loss of habeas corpus…there would be no guarantee of our historic right to trial by jury. The way would be open for a Europe-wide police force answerable to no nation and subject to no parliamentary scrutiny. Indeed, this exists in embryo, since France, Portugal, Italy, Spain and Belgium already supply officers to something called the Euro Gendarmerie Force. This is a military police outfit and answers to the European Commission for its ultimate authority. It is, in this respect, the way of the future – an entirely undemocratic and largely unaccountable future at that…

From Simon Heffer in The Telegraph (London) (dated September 20, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends September 22, 2006 (EU/BR)

Mapping the New Europe
When Germans start to use the idea of “the European Area Development Concept” which includes chunks of the United Kingdom, one has to get really jumpy. This could also be translated as “European Spatial Development Concept” which, if anything would be worse. So when it was reported in The Telegraph this week that “New EU map makes Kent part of the same nation as France”, I thought it was worthwhile going back to some of the sources. My Austrian wife was rather concerned about the fate of her own country – even if she has been resident in the UK for decades and shares my concern about the fate of mine. After all Germany ate the country whole in 1938…

From Chris Gillibrand at The Brussels Journal (dated September 7, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends September 22, 2006 (EU/BR)

How Britain is turning Christianity into a crime
How long will it be before Christianity becomes illegal in Britain? This is no longer the utterly absurd and offensive question that on first blush it would appear to be. An evangelical Christian campaigner, Stephen Green, was arrested and charged last weekend with using threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour. So what was this behaviour? Merely trying peacefully to hand out leaflets at a gay rally in Cardiff. So what was printed on those leaflets that was so threatening, abusive or insulting that it attracted the full force of the law? Why, none other than the majestic words of the 1611 King James Bible. The problem was that they were those bits of the Bible which forbid homosexuality. The leaflets also urged homosexuals to ‘turn from your sins and you will be saved’. But to the secular priests of the human rights culture, the only sin is to say that homosexuality is a sin…

From columnist Melanie Phillips, reprinted from the Daily Mail (dated September 7, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends September 22, 2006 (BR/RE/MO)

Britain 'is now biggest security threat to US'
Britain now presents a greater security threat to the United States than Iran or Iraq, an American magazine said yesterday. In an article on Islamists headlined "Kashmir on the Thames", the New Republic painted Britain's Muslim communities as a breeding ground for violent extremism. Citing recent opinion poll evidence suggesting that one in four British Muslims believed that last year's London Tube bombings were justified, the magazine said: "In the wake of this month's high-profile arrests, it can now be argued that the biggest threat to US security emanates not from Iran or Iraq or Afghanistan, but rather from Great Britain, our closest ally"…

From The Telegraph (London) (dated August 28, 2006)
Posted to Current World News & Trends September 6, 2006 (US/BR/RE/WT)