It appears the police state disease afflicting Britain has spread to the rest of Europe as well. “At the beginning of a two-day meeting in Brussels, [European] ministers adopted a package of new steps to combat terror, including strengthening border security and improving the monitoring of recruitment grounds like radical mosques,” the Tribune continues. “But deep divisions remained over whether to adopt America’s zero-tolerance approach to terror or to apply a European strategy in which privacy rights trump the right to security…. EU countries agree that terrorists must be deprived of the opportunity to use the Internet as an instrument to promote terror, but they have nevertheless rejected French demands that EU countries be granted the judicial tools to close down a suspected terrorist Web site.” Notice how civil liberties are considered a trade-off. It was a famous colonial who once quipped: “They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security.”

But never mind. Evil terrorists are working overtime to make damn sure our civil liberties are decimated. “The EU moves came as Belgian investigators charged five people with involvement in a terrorist cell that sent volunteers to Iraq, including Muriel Degauque, 38, who blew herself up in a failed attack on U.S. troops near Baghdad last month.” Degauque’s face is plastered all over the web, as she is the new frightening visage of terror—pretty white girls seduced by al-Qaeda “bad guys” bent on destroying infidels. It wasn’t so long ago we were told about a new phenomenon—formerly passive Middle Eastern Muslim women acting as suicide bombers—now we have to worry about the girl next door blowing herself and the entire block up.

Of course, the only solution is to surrender your civil liberties—and pronto.

Degauque may also be considered a poster girl for “an EU-style Central Intelligence Agency,” roundly rejected by effete soft-on-Osama wimps in Germany and France. “Many Europeans are wary of the U.S. approach to fighting terrorism, which they argue flouts human rights and condones torture.” A few more pretty girl-next-door suicide bombers will change their minds, or maybe a couple more bombings like those in Madrid and London, never mind the police were involved in the former and there are more inconsistencies in the latter than you can shake a stick at. Don’t bother yourself with the fact “Al Qaeda exists as an organized body only where the intelligence services have created, funded and employed it,” as former Justice Department prosecutor and terror expert, John Loftus, remarked after Haroon Rashid Aswat was pegged as an MI6 asset.

Instead, concentrate on the Belgian woman Muriel Degauque and recoil in horror at the prospect.

Next up: school kids with Semtex in their backpacks.