Gates of Vienna News Feed 4/30/2012

After 44 years, a witness has come forward to say that Sirhan Sirhan was not the only gunmen who shot down Robert F. Kennedy in that Los Angeles hotel back in 1968. Other witnesses also confirm that there were more than eight shots fired, contrary to the official report. In that case, a lone gunman could not possibly have been responsible for the assassination.

In other news, S&P has downgraded the bonds of eleven Spanish banks. The banks’ debt is even more risky now that as Spain has re-entered a recession. Up to 60% of the banks’ assets are allegedly tied up in dodgy real estate.

To see the headlines and the articles, open the full news post.

Thanks to C. Cantoni, Fjordman, Gaia, Insubria, JP, Nick, Seneca III, TV, and all the other tipsters who sent these in.

Notice to tipsters: Please don’t submit extensive excerpts from articles that have been posted behind a subscription firewall, or are otherwise under copyright protection.

Commenters are advised to leave their comments at this post (rather than with the news articles) so that they are more easily accessible.

Caveat: Articles in the news feed are posted “as is”. Gates of Vienna cannot vouch for the authenticity or accuracy of the contents of any individual item posted here. We check each entry to make sure it is relatively interesting, not patently offensive, and at least superficially plausible. The link to the original is included with each item’s title. Further research and verification are left to the reader.

Pensions, Ethics, Tobacco, and Fighter Jets

The following article about public pension management in Norway demonstrates the logic employed by the Norwegian government. Norway lionizes the terrorists of Hamas, but refuses as a matter of principle to allow any tobacco-related investments in its public pension portfolio.

Our Norwegian correspondent The Observer has translated an article with the latest news on pensions. He notes:

The Norwegian pension fund is currently estimated to be worth a staggering US $629 billion!

The translated article from VG.no, as posted at the subsidiary E24 Næringsliv:

The Norwegian pension fund lost Nok 10.6 billion due to ethics

The Norwegian pension fund’s ethical guidelines have slashed earnings by NoK 10.6 billion since 2005.

The calculation was undertaken by Norges Bank [Bank of Norway], and the amount was mentioned in the Government’s white paper on the management of the so-called Oil Fund, which was presented in March, according to Finansavisen.

55 companies are currently banned due to violations of the fund’s ethical guidelines.

In a government white paper on the management of the Pension Fund it has been revealed which ethical rules that have resulted in a reduction of profit. A list shows what the exclusions of various companies has cost the fund:

• Tobacco 9.6 billion
  
• Mining 2.8 billion
  
• Consumer 1.9 million
  
• Aerospace and Defense 0.8 billion
  
• General Industry 0.4 billion

The White Paper states that:

“Exclusions from the Fund are based on ethical considerations, and not financial ones. For an investor with a long-term perspective, there may be conformity between what is in the investor’s best financial interests and those that are chosen on ethical grounds, but not necessarily.”

In recent years a number of companies have been removed from the fund.

Christian Tybring-Gjedde, an MP from the FrP, is critical of the practice.

“The cost of the ethical guidelines has been immense. And what have we achieved? Has the world become a better place? Have the excluded companies changed their conduct? The practice is selective, inconsistent and completely ineffective,” Tybring-Gjedde tells Finansavisen.

The Platform for Catalonia Branches Out

Josep Anglada is the leader of Plataforma per Catalunya (Platform for Catalonia), the rising Catalan anti-Islamization party. He opposes what he calls “the scourge of Ethnomasochism” — the deadly tendency for white Europeans to assume the blame for all the evils in the world.

Mr. Anglada hopes the Platform’s brand of nationalism can be adapted and spread to other regions of Spain. The Catalan-language video below was posted on the site of Plataforma per Catalunya some four weeks ago ( “Entrevista al canal taronja”).

Many thanks to Hermes for the translation, and to Vlad Tepes for the subtitling:


The following interview with Josep Anglada was posted on the Burbuja economic forum (originally published last month at Alerta Digital, but no longer available at that site). Once again, we owe a great debt to Hermes for the translation:

AD Interview with Josep Anglada: “Europe suffers from a moral decay that leads to a loosening of policy”

Part I

A. Robles. — In a country where everybody fishes feverishly in the sea of political correctness, one has to bow to the consistency of a leader who motivates thousands of Catalans without much to fish in a short term in the tempestuous waters of Catalan politics . He is followed because of his loyalty to stated principles, a history and a cultural and ethnic heritage. Josep Anglada (Vic, 1959), president of Platform for Catalonia (PXC) has been in recent years the target of all insults, all the blaming, and all the outcries. His example of Catalanism, of loyalty to and love for Spain, all fitting his ideals, would deserve all honors in any society not as weak and defenseless as our own.

Anglada talks again with AD, the reference newspaper for the ever-increasing number of Catalan identitarians. He is relaxed, hesitation-free, and aware of his enormous responsibility regarding the future of Catalonia. Josep Anglada know that many people are interested in silencing him. He knows he will remain under heavy criticism from the fiercely mainstream press, and that the harsh verbal attacks against him will only intensify as the political expectations of PxC continue to grow.

But here’s Josep Anglada, without masks or disguises, ready to continue to defend the sublime concept of Catalan and Spanish identity, with the enormous responsibility of knowing that he not only represents the people of his party, but also many Catalans who, out of fear, still make worthless decisions when voting.

It is no understatement to say that Anglada represents for many thousands of Spaniards inside and outside of Catalonia the hope for our collective survival. While expecting almost nothing from traditional Catalan politicians, Anglada delivers with his behavior and his words daily lessons which may well be a source of inspiration to many who are involved in politics, or many others who, with their silence, have become allies of submissive policies out of fear or convenience. Here is Josep Anglada, grandly carrying ideals he always remained loyal to. And here is he now, struggling daily against those he proclaims to be his sworn enemies: those who want to reverse the cultural model and turn Catalonia upside-down, who claim that the tolling of bells has the same emotional value as the calling to prayers of a muezzin , or that the couscous is as Catalan as the “tortell of Reis.”

Many would like to catch Josep Anglada in a frightening or bad gesture. It doesn’t work. It’s time for dialogue, and Anglada does it. It is another very different issue if the principles he defends are violated or his people, which are also ours, are offended. Again, Anglada responds as he is, as a Catalan and a Spaniard.

What does Josep Anglada expect from the upcoming French elections?

I hope that Marine Le Pen will reach the second round. She embodies the hopes of a France choked by immigration and exploited by an indecent political class serving the dictates of the international markets and banks. Marine Le Pen has just declared that she is the candidate of the people against the financial powers.

I hope the French will not swallow again the opportunistic electoral lies of Nicolas Sarkozy, who begins to talk again about immigration just before the elections, or the demagogic and deceitful speech of François Hollande, promising to act against international banks, when the PSF has always been their devoted server. Obviously both are terrified of Marine Le Pen’s electoral advances; that’s why they try to steal her arguments.

The Church, in favor of the immigrationist lobby

In a recent survey, the readers of AD largely opined that only the identitarian parties can prevent the annihilation of the European culture, and that even the Church and the community institutions are powerless against it. What factors have contributed to a growing perception that traditional European institutions lack effective responses to address our current cultural and ethnic reversal?

The empirical factor. That is, the objective observation of reality, and that an unavoidable conclusion derives from it: the Church and community institutions are not only incapable of preventing the decline of European culture, but in most cases they are active agents which collaborate in the irreversible alienation of it.

The European Union is today an Euro-global union that fails to defend the European identity, economy and industry. Regarding the Church, its position in favor of immigrationist lobby is clear. As a Christian, I wish it were not so, but it is. There are always laudable exceptions, but the official line is to ask for open doors to immigrants.

Rapes in Sweden, the imposition of sharia in many British districts, intifada in France, restrictions on ideas of identity in Germany. What is happening in Europe, Josep, that such significant examples of political surrender of the ruling class still do not cause a reaction of native Europeans in order to ensure their own survival?

Totalitarians Suffer From Free Speech Phobia

Background

The Baron doesn’t have time for ‘social media’. Truth be told, I wouldn’t either if I were well, but sometimes during one of my attacks of the Vapors, when I’m stuck in bed, it’s fun to divert myself from the discomfort by visiting our Twitter page to check out the latest memes. Some of them are trivial, some amusing, some scurrilous. What they aren’t is long. A blessing indeed that each message is limited to 140 characters when you have fibrofog! The worse it gets, the more blessed is brevity.

The initial sign-up and jargon was confusing but several other bloggers helped me get the thing up and running a few years ago. Now it’s rather like standing on a busy street corner and catching bits of conversation. I miss the feisty Andrew Breitbart, who so enjoyed responding to the haters; his élan is one of the reasons AB is so missed — he was fun and fearless. And Michelle Malkin responds to them in the same way. The hatred is intense vitriol; you can’t help wondering how otherwise sane (one hopes they’re sane) adults (one hopes they’re adults) can spew that stuff so punctually and predictably... and in the end, the greatest sin of all: they’re boring.

We get email notices of “follows” every day on our account. I often look at the profiles of people who choose to get our feed, and ninety-nine per cent of the time I let the follow through. Sometimes I follow back, especially if the language isn’t foul or if it doesn’t seem to be merely a marketing ploy or spam. Other days, when I don’t feel well enough to open the computer, who knows? Followers just come on through and the busy Baron deletes them in our webmail. I seldom visit the “Following You” page to see who’s there. Sometimes I will look quickly down the list to see if a blogger compatriot is on there and doesn’t have a reciprocal “follow” from us.

I did block two real (i.e., non-spam) Twitter accounts recently: the first was quite recent: from one of those Norwegian dudes who ‘reported’ on our supposed demographics. Their descriptions were even uglier and less accurate than President Obama’s infamous "bitter clingers" comment regarding a group of American citizens who planned not to vote for him in 2008. Since then, of course, many conservatives have proudly worn "Bitter Clinger" t-shirts, etc. while they continue to razz him for his mean-spirited remarks about the good people of the Fifty Seven states of America.

[Heh. I always thought he got us confused with the OIC but obviously I’m wrong since the ever-vigilant and ever more Leftie Snopes describes the OIC as some “obscure” group. I’ll bet Madame Secretary of State would be amused.]

The second was a Swedish babe (yep, I’m politically incorrect. Yawn.) who claims (a) that Gates of Vienna is run by Fjordman, and (b) it’s Fjordman who is responsible for "his" blog’s support of Israel. For her ‘proof’ this blogress posted a picture of Fjordman to demonstrate his ‘obviously Jewish’ facial features, and then posited several psychiatric diagnoses resulting from these racial features. I didn’t see any evidence of her background in medicine, but maybe she’s modest and has scads of credentials to back up her paranoid Swedish conclusions. But given her culture, she doesn’t like to brag, see?

Given their outright lies, the two of them can come in through the front gate like anyone else. Or they can stay home. As they say around here, “it don’t confront me none” whether they read us or whether they stay home sharpening their little hate hatchets.

The Progressive Fear Showing Its (Masked) Face on Twitter

Twitter has a feature which allows you to report spam accounts if they attempt to link you.

There have only been a few here, easily deleted. However, in an interesting if predictable development, Da Tech Guy (among many others), reports that conservative blogs are being targeted by numbers of Lefties as "spam", thus getting the right-leaning blog accounts suspended by Twitter. In other words, they send out reams of spam to Twitter declaring certain right wing blogs as ‘spam’. The mind reels...

Da Tech Guy says:

Have you ever wondered why the left always seemed to take the side of the totalitarian states during the cold war. Well look at what’s happening on twitter and wonder no more:

Last night Twitchy reported that liberals had launched an assault on conservative Twitter users, reporting them as spam to trigger account suspensions and renewing their abuse of the flag-spam feature when conservative accounts were reinstated.

You can usually tell spam when it comes... [he means when it comes in your email]

Why Islam is the Largest Threat to Freedom

Below is the prepared text of the speech given today by Geert Wilders at the Gatestone Institute in New York. Many thanks to the PVV for sending it.


Dear friends,

I am happy to be in New York again, even though in my country today it is Queen’s day, a national celebration. This is why I am wearing my orange tie.

Thank you, Nina, for organizing this event and giving me the opportunity to address all of you. It is always good to be among friends. It is an honor to be here in the presence of so many people who care for the preservation of freedom in our civilization.

It is great to be in America, the beacon of liberty, the land of the free, the land where people are still allowed to speak freely. I know what I am talking about. I was acquitted after a legal ordeal that lasted almost 3 years. I had been brought to court for criticizing Islam.

Though at the end of the day I was acquitted, the court case had been a disgrace. It was a time-, money- and energy-consuming nightmare. This charade that happened in the Netherlands for the last few years could not have happened in your great country, where the First Amendment guarantees people the freedom to express their opinions.

The first Amendment is what we need in the Netherlands and Europe.

I am in New York for the release of my book “Marked for Death”. It explains why Islam is the largest threat to freedom which the world is currently facing. It argues why Islam is a totalitarian ideology rather than a religion. It reveals how Islam has already profoundly changed Europe in the last decades. It exposes the cultural relativism which has affected Europe so deeply that many in Europe refuse to stand for liberty and prefer to appease Islam.

As you know, people who speak out like myself and I pay a steep price for speaking these truths. Apart from legal attempts to silence me, there are also the threats by radical Muslims to kill me. I have been living under permanent police protection for almost eight years now. People like me pay this price for speaking the truth about Islam. But I do not regret one word. I see it as my duty to warn the West.

I have traveled widely in the Islamic world. I have read the Koran. I have studied the life of Muhammad. It made me realize that Islam is primarily a dangerous ideology rather than a religion. This is the truth. This violent ideology wants to impose Islamic sharia law on the whole world, including us the Kafirs, the non-Muslims. This inhumane ideology is also outspokenly anti-Semitic.

This ideology also harms Muslims. Islam believes that everything men have to know can be found in the Koran. As such, it is hostile to all forms of innovation. But without innovation there can be no progress and people cannot prosper.

Many people unfortunately are blind to the true nature of Islam. They are blind because they do not realize what Islam is and mistakenly believe that it is a religion just like any other religion.

I have written my book to inform them.

Islam fails four major tests that religions should fulfill:

Can We Say “I Told You So”?

Remember the “Arab Spring”? How about “democracy in the Middle East” — does that ring a bell?

Well, that was then, and this is now.

More than a year ago, before the blood had been hosed off the concrete in Tahrir Square, those of us who have studied the history of the region were not as sanguine as the mainstream media about the anticipated rosy future for the Muslim Middle East.

The past four decades of Lebanese history offered an instructive example, as did the election of Hamas in Gaza. It was obvious that when the “Arab street” finally got a chance to vote in a real election, it would install the Muslim Brotherhood and its affiliates in office.

Which, of course, is exactly what happened in Tunisia and Egypt, and to a lesser extent in Morocco. And the mandarins of the MSM are now shocked — shocked! — to discover Islamic fundamentalists calling the shots in their beloved new “democracies”.

All this brutality, murder, homophobia, and misogyny — who could have guessed?

The following article is from Saturday’s Washington Post, but similar pieces have recently appeared in The New York Times, Foreign Policy, and other venerable leftist organs.

It seems the Progressives of the media are waking up to the unintended consequences of what they pushed so fervidly to achieve last year. Or, to be more cynical about it, perhaps their masters in the Obama administration have ordered up these reports as advance damage control in anticipation of a long, hot Arab Summer just before the election:

Gates of Vienna News Feed 4/29/2012

True to his word, Pastor Terry Jones of the Dove World Outreach Center burned a Koran outside his church yesterday in Gainesville, Florida. He and his congregation also burned a print of Kurt Westergaard’s “Turban Bomb Mohammed” at the same time. The event was part of Pastor Jones’ proposed worldwide Koran-Burning Day to protest the jailing of a Christian minister in Iran. There’s no word whether any other churches burned Korans yesterday.

In other news, Canada’s finance minister caused controversy at an IMF meeting when he refused to agree on a Canadian contribution of $7 billion to the new $400-billion IMF bailout fund, which is primarily intended to address the ongoing debt crisis in the Eurozone.

To see the headlines and the articles, open the full news post.

Thanks to C. Cantoni, Fjordman, Insubria, JD, Russkiy, Steen, Takuan Seiyo, The Observer, TV, and all the other tipsters who sent these in.

Notice to tipsters: Please don’t submit extensive excerpts from articles that have been posted behind a subscription firewall, or are otherwise under copyright protection.

Commenters are advised to leave their comments at this post (rather than with the news articles) so that they are more easily accessible.

Caveat: Articles in the news feed are posted “as is”. Gates of Vienna cannot vouch for the authenticity or accuracy of the contents of any individual item posted here. We check each entry to make sure it is relatively interesting, not patently offensive, and at least superficially plausible. The link to the original is included with each item’s title. Further research and verification are left to the reader.

Muslims Slaughter Christians in Nigeria and Kenya

It was open season on Christian worshippers today in parts of Africa, as Islamic terrorists struck at churchgoers in two deadly attacks in Nigeria and Kenya.

The video below is taken from a CBC news report on the incidents in Nairobi and Kano:


A report from AGI has more details about the attack on the Church in Nairobi, which is suspected to be the work of Al Shabaab. Witnesses in the church believe that a bomb had been placed under the altar by an accomplice:

21 Dead in Attacks on Christians in Kenya and Nigeria

(AGI) Nairobi - There have been new attacks against Christians in Africa where one person was killed and ten wounded, four seriously, when a grenade was thrown at a Catholic church in Nairobi. Police sources have reported that twenty people died in an attack in Nigeria.

According to the daily newspaper the Daily Nation, no one has yet claimed responsibility for the attack during Mass at the international Church of God’s Miracles in Nairobi’s Ngara district. Six of those wounded have been hospitalized at the Guru Nanak Hospital while those most seriously injured are at the National Kenyatta Hospital. A number of witnesses have reported that the bomb may have been placed under the altar by one of those attending Mass, probably an accomplice.

No one has yet claimed responsibility but it is thought that the attacks was carried out by the Somali militia Shabaab, linked to Al Qaeda and previously responsible for other attacks against Christians in Kenya.

In March one person died in a similar attack in Mombasa and nine died in attack on a bus stop in Nairobi. Last week the American Embassy warned its citizens in Kenya that attacks were considered imminent.

The attacks on Christians in Nigeria are thought to have been carried out by the Islamic fundamentalist terror group Boko Haram. Also from AGI, here’s a report on today’s attack:

Muhammad Manipulated the Koran

The following article by Geert Wilders was published in Dutch at thr Dagelijkse Standaard website. Many thanks to a Dutch reader for sending a translation.

A note on Mr. Wilders’ book: we were sent an advance copy for review purposes, and will indeed be reviewing it.


Muhammad Manipulated the Koran
by Geert Wilders

My book about Islam (Marked for Death: Islam’s War Against the West and Me) is being launched in New York on Tuesday. It posits that the Koran is not a book that was written by Allah, but on the contrary, one that was written by Muhammad. That is the truth, but to Islam that is outright blasphemy.

Islam claims that the Koran was written down by Allah in person before the beginning of time. It was written in Arabic, says verse 20:113. The original copy of the book — the Umm al-Kitab, the “Mother of the Book”- lies on a golden table in heaven. Consequently the Koran is of a totally different order than the Jewish or Christian bibles, which were written down by prophets or apostles. The Koran was written directly by Allah himself.

According to Islam Muhammad simply noted down what the archangel Gabriel read to him from Allah’s book. Whoever doubts that must fear for his life. That is why historic and linguistic research into the origin of the Koran are taboo.

In 1991, Suliman Bashaer, a professor at the Palestinian university in Nablus, was thrown out of a second storey window by his students because he questioned the historic truth of the Koran. A Lebanese or Syrian linguist, whose identity is known to no-one and who writes under the pseudonym of Christoph Luxenberg, maintains that the Koran cannot have been written in Arabic but was written in the related Syro-Aramaic language. His life, too, is in danger, because Allah himself said that the Koran was written in Arabic. Whoever denies that commits blasphemy. When Newsweek published an article about Luxenberg’s theory some years ago it was promptly banned in a number of Islamic countries.

Yet the evidence that not Allah, but Muhammad is the author of the Koran is overwhelming. When one reads the Sira, the biography of Muhammad written by Ibn Ishaq in the eighth century, it is striking how Allah produced texts that catered directly for Muhammad’s political, sexual and covetous desires. One must be blind not to see that Muhammad was an opportunist who adapted texts as it suited him.

Gates of Vienna News Feed 4/28/2012

Despite the opposition of Sinn Fein Leader Gerry Adams, the Irish referendum on the new EU fiscal treaty is expected to support the Eurozone regime. The latest polls in Ireland show 47% in favor of the treaty, 35% opposed, and 18% undecided.

In other news, the Chinese have become the single largest source of aid to South Sudan. Before Sudan was divided, China invested extensively in the entire country, due to its oil resources. The aid has followed the oil since the breakup, causing the Chinese to focus on South Sudan.

To see the headlines and the articles, open the full news post.

Thanks to C. Cantoni, Fjordman, Insubria, JD, JP, Mary Abdelmassih, Nick, Steen, TV, and all the other tipsters who sent these in.

Notice to tipsters: Please don’t submit extensive excerpts from articles that have been posted behind a subscription firewall, or are otherwise under copyright protection.

Commenters are advised to leave their comments at this post (rather than with the news articles) so that they are more easily accessible.

Caveat: Articles in the news feed are posted “as is”. Gates of Vienna cannot vouch for the authenticity or accuracy of the contents of any individual item posted here. We check each entry to make sure it is relatively interesting, not patently offensive, and at least superficially plausible. The link to the original is included with each item’s title. Further research and verification are left to the reader.

The Natives Come First!

The anti-Islamization activist Josep Anglada is said by some to be the Tommy Robinson — or even the Geert Wilders — of Spain.

Strictly speaking, we should say “of Catalonia”, since Mr. Anglada speaks on behalf of a Catalonian political party to a Catalonian audience in the Catalan language. Catalonia has an Iberian culture, and its language is understandable to natives of other Spanish regions, but it is as ethnically distinct as Portugal.

The video below shows excerpts from a speech given by Josep Anglada of Plataforma per Catalunya (Platform for Catalonia) just before the Spanish general elections, November 10, 2011. The party received 59,781 votes.

Many thanks to our Spanish correspondent Hermes for the translation, and to Vlad Tepes for the subtitling:


A transcript of the video is below the jump:

Sabotaging the Lettuce

A Moroccan immigrant in Spain has been sabotaging his employer’s exports by concealing broken glass in shipments of lettuce. Many thanks to our Spanish correspondent Hermes for translating this article from Diario de Avisos:

Worker detained for hiding broken glass in lettuces
April 27, 2012
Europa Press, Murcia

The Civil Guard in the Murcia region has carried out “Operation Batavia”, which resulted the arrest of a worker at a food company in the Murcia region on suspicion of a crime against public health for introducing fragments of broken glass in boxes of lettuces intended for export.

The investigation began early last March, when an exporter of agricultural products from the Murcia region received a warning from their overseas customers about finding shipments of lettuces with fragments of broken glass inside, having noticed this fact just before distributing the lettuces to the final consumers.

After ruling out diverse assumptions about an alleged ‘contamination’ of the exported products, authorities established a line of research focused on the presumed responsibility of the people close to the company, more specifically to the production line, beginning to study the traceability of each shipment affected.

According to this hypothesis, sources from the Civil Guard informed that the alleged perpetrator could have introduced the pieces of broken glass in the boxes during the process of harvest, between the cutting of the vegetables on the field and its subsequent transfer to the processing compound.

After a quick investigation, the police agents determined the relationship of one of the workers of the company, who had been working in harvesting and storing for 12 years, with the above-mentioned facts.

Demography is Destiny

Update:

Many thanks to all the readers who responded by leaving their stats in the comments. I’m surprised and gratified to hear from so many lurkers!

I’ve shut down the comments now so that I can collate the results and summarize them in a new post.


A few days ago our Norwegian correspondent The Observer translated a delightful article from NRK — Norway’s official state broadcast service — about the demographics of the patrons of “Islamophobic” websites. Gates of Vienna was specifically listed among those sites whose readers fit the following profile:

Single, childless men over 65 years, with little or no education are overrepresented on Islam hostile websites, according to a survey done by Klassekampen [“Class Struggle” — a Norwegian communist newspaper].

I’m certain that Andreas Malm and Tor Bach, the authors of this useful report, are far better statistical analysts than I. Unfortunately, NRK does not describe these experts’ investigative methodology, except to say that they “used the internet analysis tool Alexa” to discover the characteristics of the average Gates of Vienna reader.

By a happy coincidence, Dymphna and I have been handed our own batch of statistics on the demographics of our visitors. Nearly a hundred readers, most of whom usually lurk, were prompted to comment on the translated NRK report, and many of those volunteered data about themselves.

I extracted the demographic information (age, sex, marital status, number of children, and level of education) for fifty-one of those commenters. It’s not a very large sample, given the thousands of readers who stop by here every day, and it’s very much a self-selected group. Based on NRK’s report, one might expect that the typical Gates of Vienna reader is too feeble-minded, rheumy-eyed, and palsied to read the “Captcha” characters and utilize the comment form properly. So self-selection and the senile incompetence of our readers could well have skewed the sample.

Still, our results are probably at least as meaningful as those cobbled together by Messrs. Malm and Bach.

Demography is destiny, so toothless and cretinous septuagenarians who cling bitterly to their Islamophobia are destined to become Gates of Vienna readers — if, that is, we believe those erudite geniuses at Klassekampen.

However, if our modest sample is any indication, a surprising number of men and women destined to read this blog turn out to engineers, surgeons, law students, and various professionals of all stripes.

The data drawn from the comments included 13 women and 38 men — that is, more than 25% of respondents were female, hardly the cesspit of testosterone posited by Mr. Malm. The youngest was 15, and the oldest was 77. The mean age of the participants was 43.6 years.

The level of education for the average volunteer was about halfway between a bachelor’s and a master’s degree.

More than half (54.9%) of the respondents were married. The average number of children for each (including all the childless participants) was 1.25.

For the purposes of this study, I’ve constructed a statistic called the “Concupiscence Index”, which counts being married as one point, and then adds an additional point for each offspring. The scattergram below plots concupiscence against age, with color-coding to distinguish the men from the women:

Gates of Vienna News Feed 4/27/2012

A federal judge has ruled that an Ohio prison did not violate its inmates’ constitutional rights by serving halal food to all prisoners. Since everyone was being treated equally in this regard, the judge determined that the prison’s actions did not constitute a state establishment of religion.

In other news, Francois Hollande, the socialist candidate in the upcoming presidential election who is ahead of the incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy in the latest polls, attempted to appeal to right-wing voters by promising to keep the burka ban, and also to crack down on immigration.

To see the headlines and the articles, open the full news post.

Thanks to C. Cantoni, Caroline Glick, Fjordman, Insubria, JD, JP, KGS, Seneca III, Van Grungy, Vlad Tepes, and all the other tipsters who sent these in.

Notice to tipsters: Please don’t submit extensive excerpts from articles that have been posted behind a subscription firewall, or are otherwise under copyright protection.

Commenters are advised to leave their comments at this post (rather than with the news articles) so that they are more easily accessible.

Caveat: Articles in the news feed are posted “as is”. Gates of Vienna cannot vouch for the authenticity or accuracy of the contents of any individual item posted here. We check each entry to make sure it is relatively interesting, not patently offensive, and at least superficially plausible. The link to the original is included with each item’s title. Further research and verification are left to the reader.

Is Breivik’s Trial Unconstitutional?

Beach Bum, one of our Norwegian expat contributors — no, he isn’t Bruce Bawer, either — has been watching the shenanigans going on in his homeland with growing concern. This so-called “trial” of Breivik has brought to the fore a growing apprehension he has had for quite some time.

Before you read his research, look at this “news” report we received earlier today. See if your reaction isn’t similar to the old saying “denial is not the name of a river in Egypt”…

Norway is quite fragile and will be for a long time to come. A culture which steadfastly refuses to metabolize normal human anger at what was done to its children is a culture in deep trouble:

Many survivors and victims’ families have been in court to watch the proceedings, yet there has been no display of anger or desire for revenge. The same is true for people outside of the court in Oslo or elsewhere in Norway.

One man, giving his name only as Carl, tied roses to the fence surrounding the court entrance. It formed part of a growing sea of flowers with written messages of hope, peace and condolences — an echo of last summer when flowers covered nearly every one of Oslo’s public squares in a response to the violence.

“We can’t show any anger here, because everything is so crazy,” he said.

“So this is our way of — not forgetting it — but thinking of something else and focusing on what happened last summer after the explosion … all the flowers in Oslo. I think it is the same thing we want to do, just to show what we mean about this.”

[…]

One Norwegian author and commentator who is following the case, Anders Giaever of the Oslo daily Verdens Gang (VG), told DW the reaction was “typically Norwegian.”

[…]

“Breivik is such an extraordinary crime, it’s the first time we experience anything like it. If something like this were to happen again I think the mood would change,” Giaever said.

I’ll bet “the mood” would change all right. And then “nice” Norway — the country famous for hating Jews and loving the terrorists of Hamas — would suddenly become more congruent.

That brittle façade would shatter into five million angry pieces.

So much for my say. The important part, Beach Bum’s observations and research are below. His conclusions are likely to send those in charge of his native country even further into denial.


Is the trial of Anders Behring Breivik unconstitutional?

by Beach Bum

Law is a complex subject, and given that the author of this post is not a lawyer, the content of what I have to say cannot be guaranteed to be entirely accurate. However, the subject matter uncovers a hidden story with enough truth to make further investigations worthwhile for those who do possess knowledge of Norwegian law.

It is worth noting that the original laws are not written in English, so wording in the translation will necessarily differ from that of the original Norwegian text. However, these minor issues have no bearing on the underlying truth on which the facts presented here are based.

The conclusion is that the trial of the Norwegian terrorist and mass murderer, Anders Behring Breivik, is unconstitutional. Because of this, any verdict handed down by the judges could be annulled and declared void. That sad fact is inescapable.

I will substantiate this claim and demonstrate how the Norwegian state and its legal systems have been thoroughly corrupted.

The Great Jihad Comes to Hesse

This brief video about self-identified Islamic terrorists in Germany is part of a longer article from Die Welt. Many thanks to Hermes for the translation, and to Vlad Tepes for the subtitling:


The article below from Die Welt (also translated by Hermes) describes the recent concentration of Islamic radicals and terrorists in the state of Hesse:

Hesse turning into a center for radical Salafists

An ever increasing number of radical Islamists gather in Hesse. A prominent figure among them is Mohamed Mahmoud, who openly incites against Germany. It seems that the authorities have their hands tied. Florian Flade reports.

“Allah willing we will conquer Rome! And them St. Peter’s square will be the place where punishments in the name of Allah will be carried out,” The man with the military vest and the traditional Pashtun wool cap says.

“Explain to your children what jihad is! Tell them about Guantánamo, about Gaza, tell them that! So they will grow up with hatred towards the Kuffar (unbelievers)”, says the somewhat bull-like preacher with shoulder-length curly haired, thus sharpening his audience’s mood.

One might think that sermons such as these come from the mountains of Afghanistan. But the man who preaches them lives in the middle of Germany, specifically in the Hessian Odenwald. His name is Mohamed Mahmoud, but he calls himself “Abu Usama al-Gharib.” Security authorities see in the 26-year-old Austrian a spiritual arsonist, a pioneer of Islamic terror.

Mahmoud preaches a form of radical Islam which glorifies jihad against “infidels”, and openly calls Al Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden a hero.

Intelligence agencies and politicians are alarmed

Intelligence agencies and politicians are alarmed that radical Islamist preachers like Mahmoud have recently increased in numbers in Hesse. Groups and individuals from Islamic circles are establishing an increasingly wide net Between Kassel and Darmstadt.

“I observe with great concern that Hesse — and especially the Rhine-Main region — continues to grow as a center for Salafists in Germany,” Hesse’s Interior Minister Boris Rhein (CDU) told Welt Online.

What confirms this trend is that militant Salafists from all over the country are establishing their residence in Hesse or at least are more often to be found there, the Minister said. “In the Rhine-Main region an important Salafist missionary network has been established.”

When domestic intelligence talks about the radicalization of Islamists in Hesse, they refer particularly to the jihadist preacher Mohamed Mahmoud. He is currently considered the most radical protagonists among the Salafists in Hesse.

Gates of Vienna News Feed 4/26/2012

Two bombing attacks on the offices of three Nigerian newspapers killed at least seven people and injured dozens. The first attack was carried out by a suicide bomber in the capital, Abuja. The second took place in the northern city of Kaduna.

In an echo of last year’s “Camp of the Saints” refugee crisis, a boatload of Afghan migrants was apparently abandoned off the coast of Calabria by human traffickers. At least one would-be immigrant died when 35 were thrown overboard by the traffickers.

To see the headlines and the articles, open the full news post.

Thanks to C. Cantoni, Fjordman, Insubria, JD, JP, Nick, Steen, TV, Vlad Tepes, and all the other tipsters who sent these in.

Notice to tipsters: Please don’t submit extensive excerpts from articles that have been posted behind a subscription firewall, or are otherwise under copyright protection.

Commenters are advised to leave their comments at this post (rather than with the news articles) so that they are more easily accessible.

Caveat: Articles in the news feed are posted “as is”. Gates of Vienna cannot vouch for the authenticity or accuracy of the contents of any individual item posted here. We check each entry to make sure it is relatively interesting, not patently offensive, and at least superficially plausible. The link to the original is included with each item’s title. Further research and verification are left to the reader.

Conserving Electricity Through Cultural Enrichment

Per capita electricity consumption in Norway has fallen in recent years. Officially-sponsored research has revealed the surprising reason behind this encouraging trend: mass immigration from the Third World.

Our Norwegian correspondent The Observer has translated an article about this phenomenal discovery. The translator includes this note:

This article is another stunning example of the brilliant research methods favoured by the Norwegian Left. In this story we’re told that non-Western immigration has resulted in a drastic reduction in electricity consumption in Norway.

Perhaps the dark bodies of the immigrants retain the heat more effectively than that of their pale-skinned hosts in the winter months. Or maybe it’s simply that they haven’t figured out how to turn on the heaters…?

Isn’t it exciting to see the multicults two favourite issues fused into one ‘happy feel-good’ news item?

Not only is asylum immigration culturally and financially enriching for Norway, but it’s also very beneficial for the environment. Wahoo! Can’t get much better than that!

Maybe I’m just a cynical old sod, but surely the fact that the Norwegian national power company was privatised in the early 1990s — which caused electricity prices to skyrocket overnight — has something to do with this reduction in power consumption?

The translated article from NRK:

Immigration has led to a reduction in electricity consumption

Electricity consumption in Norway is on its way down, and we can thank our new compatriots for this as they use minimal electricity.

The food is like in most Norwegian homes, but the living area is smaller and there are fewer lights in the home of the family of five from Eritrea.

“We turn off everything we don’t need. We don’t use much electricity,” says Milki Tecla.

And he is not alone in doing so. The number of non-western immigrants has quadrupled in Norway since 1990, and during the same period the electricity consumption of Norwegian households has levelled out.

NVE discovered that while electricity usage has increased at a steady pace, by 55 percent between 1970 and 1990, the usage from 1990 onwards has only increased by a meagre three percent.

They gave Vestlandsforsking [West Coast Research] the assignment of finding the cause behind this new trend.

Increase in living area per person has halted

The report from Vestlandsforsking establishes a clear connection.

“The most important factor is that the increase in living area per person has halted. And the most important reason for this is the growth in the number of non-Western immigrants, who on average use 40% less living area than the rest of the population,” says Carlo Aall, the head of research at Vestlandsforsking.

Sabotaging Our Miserable House

What is the Muslim Brotherhood?

Al-Ikhwan al-Muslimeen, known in English as the “Muslim Brotherhood”, was founded by the Egyptian radical Hassan al-Banna in 1928. After he was assassinated in 1949 his mantle was assumed by Sayyid Qutb, who became the most popular exponent of Sunni fundamentalism in history.

The Brotherhood is a quintessential Islamic reform movement. Above all else it aims to return to the original practice of the Islamic faith as laid out in the Koran and the Sunna.

Its motto — which is echoed by Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood franchise in “Palestine” — is translated thus:

Allah is our objective. The Prophet is our leader. The Qur’an is our law. Jihad is our way. Dying in the way of Allah is our highest hope.

Most American readers will be familiar with the Islamic charity known as the Holy Land Foundation, whose directors were convicted on one hundred and eight charges of terrorism financing in November 2008.


The above document was composed in 1991. It was entered into evidence during the Holy Land Foundation trial, and was stipulated to by the defense. From a legal standpoint, that means that what this document says is true.

It serves as the explanatory memorandum on the general strategic goal for a group in North America known as “the Islamic Movement led by Muslim Brotherhood.” Pay particular attention to these paragraphs:

The Movement must plan and struggle to obtain “the keys” and the tools of this process in carry [sic] out this grand mission as a “Civilization Jihadist” responsibility which lies on the shoulders of Muslims and — on top of them — the Muslim Brotherhood in this country.

The process of settlement is a “Civilization-Jihadist Process” with all the means. The Ikhwan [Muslim Brotherhood] must understand that their work in America is a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and “sabotaging” its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and Allah’s religion is made victorious over all other religions. … It is a Muslim’s destiny to perform Jihad and work wherever he is …

Our leaders want American citizens to be unaware of the “Civilization Jihad”. They would prefer that we regard Islam as just another religion, like Presbyterianism or Buddhism. They don’t want us to know that Islam is a totalitarian political ideology with a primitive religious component. Our awareness would upset their petrodollar-funded applecart.

To educate Americans about what is being done to their country, the Center for Security Policy in Washington D.C. — most emphatically not funded by petrodollars — has now released a ten-part online course about the Muslim Brotherhood in America.

It’s depressing stuff. We don’t want the scales to be lifted from our eyes, because then we would have to pay attention to something that we’d prefer not to see. The truth is hard to look at.

But here it is, introduced by Frank Gaffney, the president of CSP:


From the introduction to The Muslim Brotherhood in America:

More on the German Koran Giveaway

As we reported last week, a proposal by a Salafist group in Germany to give away 25 million Korans has caused discussion and controversy in the German media. Even though the Korans would be in German — and therefore not “proper” Korans — there is concern that recipients who throw their free Korans into the garbage, or burn them, or otherwise handle them in a non-halal fashion, may be subjected to reprisals.

Below is a roundup of German news stories on Abu Nagie and his Koran giveaway, as translated by Hermes. First, from Focus Online:

Police union warns about the distribution of Korans

“Hard hand of the state” against Salafis

The Chief of the German Police Union, Rainer Wendt, calls for a “hard hand of the state” against the Salafists. According to Horst Seehofer, “political and constitutional methods” must be implemented.

The campaign of handing out free Korans (Its naming: “Read!”) by Salafist extremists in Germany provides fuel for further outrage at police and political circles. Following this, Rainer Wendt (55), head of the German Police Union (DPolG), calls for a “hard hand of the state” against the Salafists who are behind the controversial action.

Wendt told the Newspaper “Bild” on Monday that: “When activists go to the streets, they must have this clearly in mind: Every step they take is being monitored, and if they exceed a legal limit, they will feel the fist of the state on them”. The state cannot tolerate that “Salafis make propaganda for extremist goals on behalf of religious freedom and stop journalists from doing their work of coverage. “

The problem is the proselytization about radical Islam

The Minister President of Hessen, Volker Bouffier (CDU) declared to Bild that: “The problem is not the distribution of the Koran, the problem is the goal of this action, which is proselytization about a radical and anti-democratic form of Islam” Only education and information works against this. Bouffier warned against overlooking it or ignoring the aspirations of the Salafists. “We must trivialize nothing. People need to know who and what is really behind this action, “continued the conservative politician.

Bavarian Prime Minister Horst Seehofer (CSU) told the online edition of newspaper Bild regarding the Quran campaign: “Germany is a Christian-oriented country and will remain so. This is a special duty for the Christian parties. I will make the aggressive proselytizing of radical Islamist Salafists a topic at tomorrow’s cabinet meeting. This must be counteracted in political and constitutional ways. We cannot simply go back to the normal daily agenda.”

Another article from Focus Online:

Why “Fjordman”?

Fjordman’s latest essay has been published at Vlad Tepes. Some excerpts are below:

Why I Chose the Name Fjordman

I have previously written a brief review of Bruce Bawer’s latest ebook The New Quislings: How the International Left Used the Oslo Massacre to Silence Debate About Islam. I am now preparing a longer text with some comments about the subjects the author discusses in his book, but will first say a few words about why I started using the name Fjordman. Bawer has some nice things to say about me, which is appreciated, but also a few critical comments, among other things about my writing under the pseudonym Fjordman.

Bruce Bawer thinks that my pseudonym is “silly.” He is, of course, well within his rights to think so. I have been asked several times why I picked that pen name, and the answer is that there is no particular reason.

I opened my old blog in February 2005, when I was already very familiar with the world of Internet websites related to Islamic issues. I even did my master’s thesis at the University of Oslo in 2004 on the subject of English-language Iranian blogs and how communications between Iranians in exile might affect the debate behind the censorship wall of the Islamic Republic of Iran. The government of Iran has copied some of the censorship measures employed by Chinese authorities. I have also seriously toyed with the idea of writing a PhD on Internet censorship, but even if you are accepted this takes years. One has to be 100% motivated before starting on something like that.

Gates of Vienna News Feed 4/25/2012

This story breaks new ground: Gerry Adams, the leader of Sinn Féin, says that the new EU fiscal treaty is “Thatcherite”. Mr. Adams made his remarks against the EU while discussing next month’s referendum in Ireland on the treaty.

In other fiscal news, S&P downgraded Argentina’s debt, and Moody’s has warned the Netherlands about a possible downgrade. Meanwhile, both Britain and Spain have slid back into recession, Spain severely so.

To see the headlines and the articles, open the full news post.

Thanks to C. Cantoni, Erick Stakelbeck, Fjordman, Gaia, Insubria, JD, JLH, Steen, Takuan Seiyo, Vlad Tepes, and all the other tipsters who sent these in.

Notice to tipsters: Please don’t submit extensive excerpts from articles that have been posted behind a subscription firewall, or are otherwise under copyright protection.

Commenters are advised to leave their comments at this post (rather than with the news articles) so that they are more easily accessible.

Caveat: Articles in the news feed are posted “as is”. Gates of Vienna cannot vouch for the authenticity or accuracy of the contents of any individual item posted here. We check each entry to make sure it is relatively interesting, not patently offensive, and at least superficially plausible. The link to the original is included with each item’s title. Further research and verification are left to the reader.

The Protocols of the Norwegian Academy

The Protocols of the Elders of Zion seems to be enjoying something of a comeback in Norway. Our Norwegian correspondent The Observer has translated an article about the affair from NRK.no (Update: I forgot to mention that this is a translation of only part of the original article):

This is pretty horrific stuff from Galtung

Peace Professor Johan Galtung has received sharp criticism from experts on anti-Semitism and conspiracy theory as a result of his latest article. “A sad exit from the Norwegian academy,” says Terje Emberland, director of the Norwegian Holocaust Centre.

In a recent article published on the website Humanist, the internationally renowned peace researcher Johan Galtung (81) writes that the directors of the three largest media conglomerates in the U.S. are Jews, and that large numbers of American newspapers and movie are “pro-Israel”.

Galtung refers to a website where one finds a re-edited article originally published by National Vanguard. The National Vanguard was originally founded by the famous national socialist William Pierce.

Galtung also writes that he recommends that everyone should read the controversial publication “Protocols of the Elders of Zion”, which throughout recent history has been highlighted as a secret plan of Jewish world domination.

A Loss of Faith in Sweden as a Democracy

In Sweden, suppressing “racists” and “xenophobes” is more important than anything else. It trumps free speech, freedom of association, artistic license, and worker solidarity.

No one must question the government’s immigration policies. So the labor unions are helping to crack down on the Sweden Democrats (Sverigedemokraterna), the only major political party that criticizes immigration.

Many thanks to Steen for the translation, and to Vlad Tepes for subtitling this Swedish video:



A full transcript is below the jump:

“Oh, We Know…”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu discusses the status of Iran’s nuclear program on CNN.

Many thanks to Vlad Tepes for uploading this video:

Zakat: Returning to the Bimetallic Standard

A large amount of Western currency flows into the Muslim Middle East. Not just petrodollars and remittances from those on hijrah overseas, but also in the form of zakat, the mandatory percentage of “alms” that is levied on halal products and shariah-compliant financial transactions.

In a shrewd move — given the imminent inflation of at least three of the world’s major currencies, including the dollar — an Indonesian sultan has decided to mint Islamic gold and silver coins to be used in the payment of zakat. Not only does his initiative fulfill the requirements of Islamic law, but it will also sidestep the collapse of the world’s reserve currency.

In addition, he’s anticipating the re-emergence of the Caliphate: “The return to the collection of zakat in gold and silver is an essential part of the re-establishment of Islam.”

Our Spanish correspondent Hermes has translated the following post from WebIslam:

The Sultan of Ternate re-establishes the Mu ’Amalat.

The Sultan of Ternate in the Moluccas, Indonesia, will start to coin through the World Islamic Mint the sultanate’s golden dinar and silver dirham, to be used in the payment of zakat and circulated as a alternative currency to the Indonesian Rupee.

His Highness Syah Mudaffar II, the Sultan of Ternate, one of the oldest sultanates of Indonesia, signed an agreement on 19 April with the World Islamic Mint in order to launch the introduction and distribution of the golden Dinar and silver Dirham in the Sultanate. Amidst local festivities and surrounded by his council, local authorities, representatives of state and delegations from countries such as Italy, Ecuador, Spain and Malaysia, Sultan Mudaffar II announced his intention to restore the payment of zakat, a compulsory tax on non-circulating wealth and one of the five pillars of Islam, in the sultanate’s own gold dinars and silver dirham rather than rupees or any other currency. He said that these coins represent the first step against riba (usury) and are traditional currencies of the Ummah which follow the rules of Islamic law regarding their purity, equivalences and uses.

This is a non-speculative currency with a real, inflation-free and universal value which breaks with the imposition of an international financial system based on transactions in order to prevent real freedom of trade and choosing of currency.

The statement was received with surprise, interest and skepticism by those present, some of whom stressed in their speeches the need to “study the matter carefully, as the rupee is the official currency of the Indonesian state.”

Gates of Vienna News Feed 4/24/2012

A Muslim mob in the Sudanese capital Khartoum burned down a Catholic church and its adjoining school. The church was reportedly used mainly by worshippers from South Sudan.

In other news, during March inflation-adjusted income in Italy fell by 2.1% over the same month last year, the greatest drop in 17 years.

To see the headlines and the articles, open the full news post.

Thanks to C. Cantoni, Diana West, Erick Stakelbeck, Fjordman, Gaia, Insubria, JD, JP, Nick, Steen, The Observer, TV, and all the other tipsters who sent these in.

Notice to tipsters: Please don’t submit extensive excerpts from articles that have been posted behind a subscription firewall, or are otherwise under copyright protection.

Commenters are advised to leave their comments at this post (rather than with the news articles) so that they are more easily accessible.

Caveat: Articles in the news feed are posted “as is”. Gates of Vienna cannot vouch for the authenticity or accuracy of the contents of any individual item posted here. We check each entry to make sure it is relatively interesting, not patently offensive, and at least superficially plausible. The link to the original is included with each item’s title. Further research and verification are left to the reader.

A Petition to Ban the Koran in Spain

Back in February we posted about a apostate from Islam in Spain named Imran Firasat who has petitioned the Spanish government to ban the Koran.

Mr. Firasat has just learned that his petition has been formally accepted by the Spanish parliament. Below is the report from today’s Minuto Digital. Many thanks to our Spanish correspondent Hermes for the translation:

The Congressional Constitutional Committee will consider the request of Imran Firasat to ban the Koran in Spain

April 24, 2012

Imran Firasat, a Pakistani national with legal residence in Spain as a political refugee, has accomplished what at first seemed impossible: his petition to ban the Koran in Spain will be discussed in the Constitutional Committee of the Spanish Congress, as shown by the document displayed above, which is reproduced exclusively here at the Minuto Digital website.

A few weeks ago Imran handed over a formal document to the Ministry of the Presidency, the Congress of Representatives, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of the Interior, in which he presented 10 points to back his request:

1.		The Quran is not a sacred and religious book, but a violent book, full of hatred and discrimination.
2.		The Quran is a horrible book which provokes a community it calls Muslims to undertake Jihad, kill innocent people and destroy the peace of the world.
3.		The Quran is responsible for all the terrorism we have seen in recent years in which thousands of people lost their lives.
4.		The Quran is a book which contains evil teachings and forces its believers to capture the entire world and total power at any price.
5.		The Quran is a book which legally permits and incites hatred and violence, and for that reason it is not compatible with the modern world, including Spain.
6.		The Quran is a book which directly discriminates between human beings.
7.		The Quran is a book which does not allow either freedom of expression or religious freedom.
8.		The Quran is a book which causes women to suffer and be tortured through the totality of its injustice and macho laws.
9.		The Quran is a book which, rather than teaching unity, teaches disunity, and in this way does not allow its believers to form friendships with those who are not Muslims, because in the eyes of Quran they are infidels.
10.		The Quran is a major threat to the free society of Spain. A book which clearly preaches the messages of jihad, killing, hate, discrimination and revenge. For that reason it cannot be compatible with the Spanish system in any sense. It is a book totally contrary to what the law and constitution of Spain say, and it incites hatred and violence in our country.

Coincidentally, we received an email this afternoon from the petitioner, Imran Firasat. He sent a photocopy of the official acceptance of his petition, and included this note:

This is Imran Firasat (A Pakistani ex Muslim residing in Spain). I hope you still remember me. I am the one who some weeks ago lodged a formal petition with the Spanish government for prohibition of the Quran in Spain. Today I get back to you again with the fantastic news that my petition has been admitted successfully in the parliament of Spain and has been sent to the next level.

When I lodged the petition, many Muslims sent me the messages calling me stupid and commenting that the Government of Spain is “not going to entertain your petition and they will tear it up and throw it away”.

Well, the good news is that I have received a letter from the Parliament of Spain, in which they informed me that they have admitted my petition and sent to the “Constitutional Commission” of the Parliament:

The Influence of the Salafists

We’ve posted about the German author Necla Kelek several times over the past few years. Ms. Kelek is a practicing Muslim of Turkish extraction. She is also one of those rare birds: a truly “moderate” Muslim who is educated, tolerant, and has assimilated to German values. She refuses to acknowledge the ascendancy of the Islamic fundamentalist movements that are now sweeping the Middle East and Europe.

The following article was prompted by the proposal by a group of German Salafists to give away 25 million copies of a German-language Koran. Many thanks to JLH for translating Ms. Kelek’s piece from Frankfurter Allegemeine Zeitung, via Europe News.


The Influence of the Salafists: Democracy Is the Opposite of Islam
by Necla Kelek

The philosophy of the Salafists is as old as time — older than the pedestrian zones where they are passing out the Koran. They are making it easy on themselves there: their political program is an intensification of heaven and hell.

I was in Tunis in January of this year to speak with women about heir situation after the revolution. The great provocation locally was the occupation of Manouba University by Salafists. On the campus of the linguistic faculty, outside the city and lined with orange trees, about 8,000 young people are educated as language teachers.

On the way there, we encountered several female students wearing head-scarves and niqabs, who had not been able to study for six weeks because teaching had been halted on account of the occupation. They sympathized with the occupiers but were afraid that their year of study would not be recognized.

The rector had been locked in his office by the demonstrators. Since no one had helped him, he abruptly halted teaching in November. I expected a large group of occupiers. But as we came onto campus on January 5th, neither students nor demonstrators, nor even police were to be seen. The young women led us the rectorate — a one-story building. Six young men were sitting on their sleeping bags in the foyer in front of the rector’s office. These were the occupiers.

Is the niqab/burqa a part of this?

I asked what they were aiming for with their action. “We want our women,” said the speaker, “ to study according to the rules of our religion.”

“Which are?”

“They must be allowed to study and take exams in Islamic clothing.”

“The niqab — full cover?”

“Yes, that is the clothing Islam prescribes for us.”

“But then no one can know who is sitting across the table,” I objected, in order to express the practical problems of identification in examinations.

“The burqa is allowed in Oxford,” the speaker answered. “We claim protection of minorities. It is our freedom. The time of oppression is past.”

A placard in the foyer showing a covered woman proclaimed: “You cannot free me if you take away my rights.” The Islamists feel emancipated, because they were persecuted under Ben Ali and now are not under any control. They speak of dignity and say that Western freedom is only caprice and corruption.

As proof, they invoke their piety and poverty. They say their religion is true-to-the-word Islam and its law is sharia. They interpret this as Allah’s commandment which is made over human beings, as are also the Islamic principle of vengeance, family law and Islamic criminal law.

The caricature of a religion

Scene change: According to a report by CBN, the population in Brussels in 2030 will be majority Muslim. Already today, a Salafist group called “Sharia4Belgium” is agitating for the introduction of Islamic regulations. Their spokesperson, Abu Imran states openly what the group is about: “Democracy is the opposite of Islam. Allah says what is allowed and what is forbidden.”

Testosterone Poisoning and the Counterjihad

The Observer has sent us one of those “you-can’t-make-this-stuff-up” items that is too good not to share with our readers — i.e., you lonely old men out there, sitting in front of your computer thinking evil thoughts about jihadists. Why can’t you get a life?

Bless The Observer for finding this trifle. It’s so stereotypical of the “thinking” in women-dominated cultures — and I include in that group all the sissy men whose nightmares are stalked by the gruesome vagina dentata. In other words, the kinds of men who write this kind of drivel. Or was it written by a woman?

Regardless of the author’s gender, this is simply one more example of mainstream media’s ongoing attempt to replace reality with their own handy “narrative” — and their narrative is ugly indeed. Ugly and mean-spirited, just like all the other smears the Left extrudes from its sausage-making machine and slings at its enemies.

Here’s the deal: according to this “research” our readers are mostly men. Lonely men. Lonely old men. Lonely old men who are ignorant, poorly educated and marginalized by society. They are childless to boot, don’tcha know.

According to the sources they reference, this profile of Counterjihad readers was gleaned by studying the statistics on Alexa. Hmmm… Here’s Alexa’s wiki — do you see any demographic information there? Me neither.

And here’s Alexa itself. I haven’t looked at it in several years but last time I visited, I saw no demographic information. But these Communists, they read tea leaves, so maybe they have the inside track on this voodoo.

Here is The Observer’s translation of the article from today’s VG supporting this thesis. The translator includes this note:

It turns out that the overwhelming majority of GoV visitors are lonely men over 65 with no or very little education. Oh, yes, and they also feel marginalised and ignored by society.

Don’t believe me? Take a look at this article, and everything will be explained to you!

Does this mean VG is guilty of ‘Seniorphobia’? I hear the disease is on the rise among the elites...

Here’s the translated article:

Men are overrepresented on Islam-hostile websites

Single, childless men over 65 years, with little or no education are overrepresented on Islam hostile websites, according to a survey done by Klassekampen [“Class Struggle” — a Norwegian communist newspaper].

Klassekampen has used the internet analysis tool Alexa to examine eight Islam hostile websites including Gates of Vienna, Jihad Watch, The Brussels Journal, Islam Watch and Atlas Shrugged [sic].

According to data that Klassekampen has looked at the age group of the visitors to these sites range from 65 years and above. Men are clearly over-represented and most of them don’t have an education beyond primary school. Few have children, and those who visit these sites do so from their own homes and not from work or school.

The data correspond well with membership groups of various extreme right-wing parties in Europe, the journalist and author of “The hatred against Muslims” Andreas Malm says.

“There is an overwhelming majority of older men, often unemployed who may feel ostracized from society and who are looking for explanations and scapegoats,” he says.

The Trial of Anders Behring Breivik: Week One

An abbreviated version of the following essay was published by FrontPage Mag.


The Trial of Anders Behring Breivik: Week One
by Fjordman

The first week of the trial against the confessed mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik has been completed in Oslo. The way it has been carried out has intrigued visiting foreign journalists in both positive and negative ways. A representative of the television news channel CNN was impressed that Norwegians take “pride in the fact they are a society who will respect Breivik’s human rights, even when he showed no respect for the lives of others.”

Many are shocked to find out, though, that the maximum penalty one can get in Norway for any crime is 21 years in prison. That’s in total, not per murder, although there are admittedly mechanisms in place for keeping a person locked up indefinitely if he still poses a threat to society.


If Breivik is judged to be sane he will thus get just a few months in a comfortable jail for each of the 77 murders he committed. Is that a sign of a society that values human life, or is it a sign of a society putting the rights of criminals above those of their victims?

Friday April 20th was the worst day so far. That day the terrorist described in horrifying detail and with shocking indifference the dozens of individual murders he committed during his shooting spree on the island of Utøya outside Oslo. Yet he had cried publicly only a couple of days earlier when the court showed his own rather silly and unprofessional propaganda movie.

The political commentator John Olav Egeland said that Geir Lippestad and the other defense lawyers worked hard in court to make Breivik appear as rational as possible. The purpose of this was to have him declared sane, as well as “to spread the responsibility for the actions Breivik has done.”

I finished reading his manifesto a week before the trial began. I was struck by how much he has quoted the free online encyclopedia Wikipedia, and how little focus on this has been appeared in the mass media — as opposed to the fact that he cites some Islam-critical writers.

Calling Breivik “the Wikipedia terrorist” is perhaps an exaggeration, but he certainly uses this source very extensively, from discussing weapons and body armor, to the nuclear reactors he fantasizes about blowing up. He admitted during the trial that the English language version of Wikipedia has been his main source of education. It has probably shaped his strange and imprecise political vocabulary, too. For example, he employs the term “national anarchists,” which is not commonly used in major publications.

Breivik in his long statement in court, Breivik quoted in a slightly modified version the American President John F. Kennedy: “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.” This was also highlighted in his 1518 page so-called manifesto, in which he quoted another former US President, Thomas Jefferson, that “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.” These quotes are more militant than anything ever written by Robert Spencer, Bat Ye’or, Andrew Bostom, Melanie Phillips, or myself.

On page 1120, ABB cites the American Declaration of Independence from 1776 in favor of his views. This document was written primarily by Thomas Jefferson. He mentions the Second Amendment to the United States Constitution, the right to bear arms, and thereafter refers to Mahatma Gandhi and the quote “Disobedience of the law of an evil state is therefore a duty.”

The Western mass media have widely portrayed those quoted in Breivik’s manifesto — against their will — as dangerous right-wing extremists. Do these alarming extremists include Thomas Jefferson and Gandhi?

Gates of Vienna News Feed 4/23/2012

Egypt’s military government has cancelled a contract with Israel to supply the Jewish state with natural gas. The deal was first signed in 2005, and the Israeli government referred to the cancellation as “unlawful”. The pipeline supplying the gas has become vulnerable to repeated acts of sabotage since the fall of the Mubarak regime.

In other news, the IMF has doubled the amount allocated to its bailout fund, while warning the EU to accelerate its efforts to stem the Eurozone debt crisis. Meanwhile, European stock markets fell on the news of the collapse of the Dutch government.

To see the headlines and the articles, open the full news post.

Thanks to C. Cantoni, Fjordman, Gaia, Insubria, JD, JP, Steen, The Observer, and all the other tipsters who sent these in.

Notice to tipsters: Please don’t submit extensive excerpts from articles that have been posted behind a subscription firewall, or are otherwise under copyright protection.

Commenters are advised to leave their comments at this post (rather than with the news articles) so that they are more easily accessible.

Caveat: Articles in the news feed are posted “as is”. Gates of Vienna cannot vouch for the authenticity or accuracy of the contents of any individual item posted here. We check each entry to make sure it is relatively interesting, not patently offensive, and at least superficially plausible. The link to the original is included with each item’s title. Further research and verification are left to the reader.

The Progressive Alphabet

Our German translator JLH obviously has too much time on his hands. Given that I am similarly afflicted, his latest effort seemed to be right on my wavelength. [Thus, I felt compelled to interfere edit a bit. I hope he forgives me.]

The subtitle to his clever Alphabet? —

Background information on making a left turn against traffic

Readers’ further ideas are welcome. No graffiti, of course. That’s a pastime best left to Progressives.


A is for Activism:
Going to a picnic carrying a sign that says: “Save the Ants.”

B is for Brussels:
The iron fist in the chocolate glove.

C is for Civility:
Just keep your opinions to yourself and I won’t have to hurt you. Much.

D is for Democrat:
My friends and I are the 99%. Everyone else is the 1%… Math? What math?

E is for EPA:
Stop. ALL. human. activity. right. now. [Evil People Activity?]

F is for Facebook:
Lie down on the couch and tell me everything. [it will all be used against you]

G is for Google:
“Don’t Be Evil” — and censoring citizens for the People’s Republic of China is NOT evil.

H is for Hollywood:
What blacklist?

I is for Islamization:
Resistance is futile. Ask the OIC.

J is for Justice:
Don’t expect to get any here. That’s simply the name of our Department.

The Acquittal of Lars Hedegaard

As reported here last Friday, the “hate speech” conviction of the historian and journalist Lars Hedegaard has been overturned by the Danish Supreme Court. Below is an account of the case from Sappho.dk, as translated by the editors.


Free Press Society President acquitted by unanimous Supreme Court

This verdict is not necessarily a victory for free speech, says Lars Hedegaard

By the Editors of Sappho.dk

(COPENHAGEN, 20 April 2012) A panel of seven Supreme Court justices led by Chief Justice Børge Dahl has acquitted Free Press Society President Lars Hedegaard, who stood accused of intentionally denigrating Muslims.

In a press release the Court states that “there has been no basis for convicting him of intentionally disseminating his remarks to a wider audience”. Consequently, the Court can find no grounds for remitting the case for re-trial in Superior Court, which convicted Lars Hedegaard after he had been found not guilty in the lower court.

Hedegaard comments:

“I’m satisfied that the Supreme Court has delivered a verdict in accordance with the evidence given in lower and superior court. The prosecution had this evidence before it decided to press charges so I cannot understand why it went ahead.

“The prosecutor has burdened the courts and the taxpayers needlessly for more than two years.”

The truth still doesn’t count

Lars Hedegaard goes on:

Showdown!

Readers in California, take note: CJHS is sponsoring a the first in a series of Town Hall discussion meetings in L.A. on May 1. Jamie Glazov is acting as M.C., and Nonie Darwish will be one of the panelists talking about the Muslim Brotherhood and its Grand Jihad against America.

If I didn’t live three thousand miles away, I would surely be in attendance that night…

Town Hall on Terror
Presented by the David Horowitz Freedom Center
A Jamie Glazov Production

We want YOU to join the discussion. “Town Hall on Terror” is the first in a series of Town Hall meetings sponsored by Children of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and the David Horowitz Freedom Center, to allow your voice to be heard.

In its own words, the Muslim Brotherhood is engaged in a “grand Jihad” with the intention of “eliminating and destroying Western civilization from within.” Like it or not, we are in a showdown with evil. But what exactly is the nature of the threat we face and how can we best confront it?

Your host is Jamie Glazov, editor of Frontpagemag.com and author of United in Hate and Showdown with Evil.

The four panelists who will kick off the discussion are:

• Nonie Darwish, author of the new book The Devil We Don’t Know
  
• Mark Tapson, Shillman Journalism Fellow at David Horowitz Freedom Center
  
• Bosch Fawstin, creator of the superhero Pigman, the jihadist’s worst nightmare
  
• Dwight Schultz, Hollywood actor and expert on Hollywood and media bias

Tuesday, May 1, 2012

6:30 p.m. Sign in
7p.m. Start of program

Sherman Oaks Woman’s Club
4808 Kester Ave.
Sherman Oaks, CA 91403

On Being English

Today is the Feast of St. George, and Paul Weston has written an essay at the British Freedom website in honor of the occasion.


On Being English
by Paul Weston

Despite the fact that British Freedom believes in our 300 year-old union, I will make an exception allowed by St George’s day to write specifically about England — and I write as a proud Englishman.

I will not bore and depress you with details of the many anti-English forces acting against us. Rather, I will outline just why Cecil Rhodes so memorably stated that ”To be born an Englishman is to win first prize in the lottery of life.”

When the world twice descended into warfare and savagery over the last century, the English were on the right side. We were instrumental in defeating Kaiser Wilhelm’s imperialism and we stood alone when we declared war on Adolf Hitler’s Germany — whilst Adolf himself dreamed only of an Anglo-Germanic empire.

Even in war, we retained our decency. The Quisling left will mock this, of course, but by which side would a surrendering soldier prefer to be taken prisoner? The English, of course. Not for us the inhumanity of the SS, be they German or Lithuanian. Not for us the death camps of the Japanese and not for us the Russian rape of Berlin women. And why not? Because we are English, that’s why not.

After the War, when the left-wing Socialists took up where Hitler left off, so the English again came down on the right side of history. Admittedly we had our own Communists/Socialists (just as we have today, personified by the UAF, Hope Not Hate etc) but not for us the Gulags, the torture, the genocide, the shattered lives, the broken families, the destroyed infrastructure and environment — for us it was still Farmer Giles in the countryside, still the boisterous workingmen’s clubs and still the bowler hats and umbrellas in the city.

And what of Empire? Well, whether one agrees with Empire or not, there can be no argument that after Independence the countries which retained our democratic and judicial systems went on to forge their successful way in the world. Some chose to discard our values and became pestilent hell-holes such as Somalia, some never had the good fortune to be ruled by us and were consequently unable to prosper. What is the difference between hellish Haiti and bountiful Barbados? Simply put, English values.