Operatic Notes

Summer Fundraiser 2012, Day Two
Readers may be forgiven for thinking that the one-man band in the image above is a self-portrait — the Baron clanging and tweedling and oompahing his way through all the earsplitting tasks necessary to maintain this blog and its ancillary functions, while bemused (or irritated) spectators look on from either side.

But such is not the case. Not only Dymphna, but numerous other collaborators are also necessary to keep Gates of Vienna on track. As I have said so often in the past, this blog is a group effort. The group has grown so large over the years that it would be difficult and time-consuming to compose a list of everyone who deserves credit — that must be left for a separate post sometime in the future.

For this morning’s post, I’ll just mention the tireless and dedicated efforts of Vlad, who gets a cut of this week’s proceeds in return for the massive amount of video work he does for the cause.

A callout to ICLA is also in order: these are the people who made the Brussels Conference and the Brussels Process possible — they all know who they are.

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The theme of this week’s bleg is “Discontents”, and yesterday morning we received a discontented email from a reader:

Dear Gates of Vienna:

I would happily contribute to your fund raising efforts, I value your stalwart efforts to make everyone aware of the perils of Islam and permitting Muslims to immigrate to their respective countries.

You provide a valuable resource.

However, as long as you display the “We support Israel” link on your page I will be unable to help you. While Islam is possibly a greater threat culturally, Israel is a massive boil on the backside of Western Civilization as well.

Please take this under consideration.

Kind regards,

[Name]

We get emails like this from time to time, and I never know how to reply. What am I supposed to say? “Yessir, the lure of your money has convinced me that hating Jews and withdrawing support from the Zionist Entity is the most prudent course of action for our blog.”?

I mean, really. I support Israel for sound geopolitical reasons, as a strategic necessity. I also happen to like Jews, generally speaking. The vast majority of those I’ve known personally are fine people. I’m not so keen on George Soros, Rahm Emmanuel, Abe Foxman, etc. But I’ve never made their acquaintance — we don’t exactly move in the same circles.

So the sidebar button stays. We support Israel. Deal with it.

I suppose we must lose quite a few donations that way. But what price principle?

If only those wire transfers from the Mossad came in every month, like the Tinfoil League believes! If only the Zionist conspiracy decided to unlock their swollen strongboxes and deliver us our just recompense!

Ah, well…

Notice that our discontented reader says that Islam may “possibly” be a greater threat than Israel. “Possibly”?? There are about 20 million Jews in the world, and (depending on whose estimate you believe) about 1.4 billion Muslims. That is, there are about 70 Muslims for every Jew.

Are those few Jews so devious, so crafty, so demonically brilliant that it takes seventy Muslims to match a single Zionist conspirator? No wonder they’re God’s chosen people!

Why wouldn’t our out-of-sorts reader donate to Hamas or Hezbollah instead?

That would help direct his money towards those who intend the total destruction of the “possibly” greater danger.

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Enough of the ranting and raving. Discontent has had its day; now let’s talk about opera.

The title of this post is based on a feature in an 1895 issue of Punch from which the header illustrations were borrowed. But in our case, rather than a musical production, it refers to the original meaning of the Latin word.

Opera is the plural of the word opus, which meant “work” or “accomplished production”. Coming to us through the Italian, it was eventually used to describe the collection of musical and dramatic components that make up what we now call an “opera”. The French word oeuvre is cognate, and carries the same sense of an artistic or intellectual accomplishment.

That’s what you’re contributing to here when you lay out a few bucks (or shekels) for Gates of Vienna. You’re helping to maintain our opera, our body of work.

This is the task that Dymphna and I have set ourselves for the time that remains to us. We owe all our donors a debt of gratitude for assisting with the oeuvre.

Yesterday’s generosity originated in the following locales:

Stateside: California, Georgia, Illinois, New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania

Near Abroad: Nothing so far!

Far Abroad: Australia, Denmark, Germany, Poland, Sweden, and the UK

It was an amazing first day. Many thanks to everyone who chose to contribute.

I have a backup of material that collected while I was recording donations and working on this post, but that will have to wait until after I catch a few hours of shuteye.


The tip jar in the text above is just for decoration. To donate, click the tin cup on our sidebar, or the donate button. If you prefer a monthly subscription, click the “subscribe” button.