Gates of Vienna News Feed 12/31/2012

Happy New Year, everybody! We got to the end of 2012 somehow, and the world didn’t end. But we fell over the fiscal cliff, which may be close enough for government work.

The Grand Mufti of Australia, Ibrahim Abu Mohamed, paid a visit to Gaza and met with Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh. The mufti praised Osama bin Laden and the Palestinian people in the “land of jihad”.

In other news, Al Qaeda in Yemen has offered a bounty of $160,000 to anyone who kills the American ambassador to that country.

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

Thanks to C. Cantoni, Fjordman, Insubria, JD, Jerry Gordon, JLH, JP, Kitman, The Observer, 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.

Will the Truth Set Muslims Free?

The editors of the French magazine Charlie Hebdo seem to have a death wish. Not content with publishing Mohammed cartoons (twice), having their offices fire-bombed, and living under police protection, they are now preparing to publish a biography of Mohammed in cartoon form.

We’ve all heard of “suicide by cop”. Is this a new syndrome, “suicide by fatwa”?

The editor of Charlie Hebdo proclaims that his new project should be acceptable to Muslims, given that it will be a sober account based on the factual history of the prophet’s life, as recounted in Sirat Rasul Allah, the traditional authoritative compilations comprising the biography of Mohammed.

Unfortunately, “mere facticity” may not be enough to save Charb’s skin. As Steve Coughlin has demonstrated, a non-Muslim may state the exact truth about Islam while quoting correctly from authentic Islamic sources, and still be guilty of “Islamic slander” — and thus deserve the death penalty.

If the words of an infidel cause harm to Islam, then they violate Islamic law — period. And nothing is more hurtful to the Islamic cause than revealing the life of Mohammed in all its gory details to non-Muslims.

Memo to Charb: invest in Kevlar, and consider plastic surgery.

Many thanks to Hermes for translating this article from RTL.fr:

Charlie Hebdo will publish a “halal” biography of Mohammed

Charlie Hebdo has done it again. The magazine will publish a special edition on Wednesday with the title “The Life of Muhammad”, a “perfectly halal” cartoon biography made up from texts of Muslim chroniclers. It was Charb, the editor of the weekly satirical magazine, who announced this on Sunday to AFP. But the newspaper’s management promised that this time the tone will not be provocative.

“Neither a cartoon nor a satire”

It will be neither a cartoon nor a satire, but a detailed account taken from serious bibliographical sources. This fact is certificated in a foreword by “Zineb”, a Franco-Moroccan sociologist of religions and co-author of this publication.

“This is a biography authorized by Islam since it was written by Muslims. It is a compilation of what was written about the life of Muhammad by Muslim chroniclers and it has simply been drawn in pictures,” Charb added, rejecting the idea that his action constitutes a provocation. “I do not think that (even) the most learned Muslims will find anything substantial to complain about,” says Charb, whose magazine has caused a stir several times after publishing Mohammed cartoons.

As for criticism that will surely be voiced regarding the fact that depicting the prophet is blasphemous, Charb replies that “It’s just the tradition; it is absolutely not found in the Qur’an. Insofar as Mohammed is not ridiculed, I do not see why one could not read this publication as one read the stories of the life of Jesus in the Catechism.”

Europe and the Coming Caliphate: European Mufti-ism

This is the second part of a four-part translation of an article by Hans-Peter Raddatz, a well-known German author and scholar who specializes in Islamic issues. The original was published in issue Nr. 5/2012 October of Die Neue Ordnung (pdf; table of contents here). In it Dr. Raddatz discusses the most recent book by Bat Ye’or, and its significance as the Islamization of Europe enforces “a comprehensive tolerance and religious freedom for Islam as the new dominant culture.”

Many thanks to JLH for taking on the task of translating this important work. Part One is here.

Hans-Peter Raddatz

Europe and the Coming Caliphate
The Systemic Background of an Important Book

2. European Mufti-ism

Bat Ye’or’s Caliphate offers us a look at a political and cultural reality whose advance on the citizens of the European Union is as covert as it is ruthless. As other cultures, primarily Islam, are forced upon them as peace-making panaceas to which there are “no alternatives” — certainly not in their own culture — it is possible to cleverly deploy words like faith, tolerance, respect, solidarity, performance, etc., to gradually train the public in interculturally correct thinking and actions that can then be further bolstered by institutions properly directed by the media. It is here that the book’s contents take on great significance by exposing the Islamocentric consequences of pluralistic modernization and the alternative-cultural diktats in discourse. These latter are used to defame Bat Ye’or’s volatile, uncomfortable statements as conspiratorial thinking or worse, which increases the need for an impartial imposition of order. And so much the more, since the author is suffering attacks from the media and the internet which are additionally directed against her person and her background. The Caliphate, as her newest book, is a summary, updating an expanded evaluation of processes which she described in her work, Eurabia — the Euro-Arab Axis — a characterization which was circulating long before in US diplomatic circles (US embassy, Madrid Doc.05880/1974). It is about the Islamization of Europe, which since about 1970 has been almost the exclusive topic of the so-called intercultural or inter-religious dialogues in which Islam is marketed as the religion of abundant peace, cultural tolerance and ethical civilization. The central institutions of the Euro-democracies — politics, economics, universities, jurisprudence, charities, churches — are fulfilling with increasing propagandistic pressure on public opinion the Islamic demands for freedom to expand and dominance of their own law (sharia), sustained so that this political religion — accompanied by wildly expanding immigration and the networking of mosques — is developing into a factor with far-reaching potential for extortion.

This type of process has sunk so deeply into the folk pedagogy of the dialogue, into the everyday work of the institutions and into the consciousness of the ruling classes, that Islam not only “belongs in Germany” as more and more actors in the dialogue emphasize, but, according to the standard of the EU commission, can be regarded as “co-owner of Europe.” No doubt the historic antagonist concerning the fait accompli of immigration will now become an element of political, social, academic and cultural life dictated to Europeans. The speech regulations play a decisive role in this, committing citizens to the elimination of their own worth as well as a comprehensive tolerance and religious freedom for Islam as the new dominant culture. So the claim to absolute validity could make Islam less a “part of Europe” than Europe a province of Islam.

Bat Ye’or’s book proves to be a hard-to-refute chronicle, describing this process as a mass deception by the elites. She documents a continuing, extortionate, unlimited tolerance of immigration, which sees compromise as the path to subjugation, until the “peace of Islam” — full conformity with its rules — has been reached. Citizens’ claims of basic rights like freedom of opinion, of person, and of a non-Islamic religion are considered “intolerance” because they conflict with the universal law of the dominance of Islam. Therefore, it appears “just” that protagonists — Muslim or otherwise — proceed against dissidents with attack terms like rightist radicalism, xenophobia and racism, but above all with the systemic concept, Islamophobia. Its totalitarian potential demands a correspondingly system-compatible evaluation of its set-up, but this is in widespread retreat as a result of the intensifying censorship in leading media. It should be understood that no power follows the rules that it sets for the people, that the driving forces of the world picture are — for their own part — the driven and they are driving today’s cultural change and making the future of older citizens available to our newer ones. Misusing their official positions, they are, when it seems useful, trading away constitution and dominant culture, while speaking deceptively of freedom and democracy, but in fact advancing dictatorship and compulsion. The empty phrases of the dialogue mills have the effect of the proverbial dripping drops which hollow out institutions, finagle the general trust of the public and advance the encroachment of the Islamic complex. The loyalty of the public is still to the elites in the person of representatives oriented toward the public welfare, who meanwhile — with their protection of Islamic interests, its destruction of the original culture and their own social aspirations — are well “on the way to democracy” of another kind.

Using the example of Islamically-induced anti-Semitism, I myself have already demonstrated the mechanisms which are driving the elites of Europe toward an apparently unstoppable Islamization (Allah and the Jews, Berlin, 2009). In this process, the intercultural dialogue stands for a self-propelled strategy under the aegis of the UN, in the proliferating networks of the EU, its states and the Islamic world. The UN, for its part, has been under strong Arabic influence since the British passed the Palestine mandate in 1947. Therewith, the continuation of the Nazi-Islam clique was guaranteed at the highest level, which led — in the subsequent trend to the Left in postwar Europe — to a Nazification of the Socialists, and plays a large role in Bat Ye’or’s account. The common nomenclature of this Left-Right fusion de-democratized the states in the European unification, that is, it reduced the participation of the people to areas which had no influence on the ongoing Islamic expansion. The anti-democratic transfer of sovereignty from EU states to the unelected Brussels oligarchy gave a kick-start to an imperial formation of the Union which distanced itself from the republican principle and took on dictatorial — or at least neo-feudal — characteristics. With the level of multicultural tolerance, this process elevated Islam to the lead culture of ultimate “peace,” because its oil, money, people and import power promised the greatest “intercultural” potential. The impetus of the OIC (Organization of the Islamic Conference — since 2011, Cooperation) strengthened the Left-created UN Nazism, which allied itself with Arabic lobbying for the Koranic canon of hostility against Jews and Christians. This procedure has a 100-year tradition. Anti-Semitism, hostility to churches and Islamophilia belong to the basic heritage of the Enlightenment.

Activity in Sderot

Our Israeli correspondent MC sends this brief note indicating that Gaza may be resuming business as usual:

We are getting an increase in air activity over the city, last night we had a pair of Apache attack helicopters patrolling, this morning the F16’s were back and now the drone is up.

What this signifies I do not yet know, maybe nothing…

I don’t know if you are aware, but last week there was a failed attempt to launch a missile from Gaza:

“December 23 In the evening, Palestinians launched a rocket that apparently landed within the Gaza Strip.”[317]

Jerusalem Post 23-12-2012

Gates of Vienna News Feed 12/30/2012

A young woman of Turkish origin in Germany was seriously burned when sulfuric acid was thrown over her during an unexpected attack at her home. Two young men, also of Turkish origin, have been arrested in connection with the crime. Police have not mentioned a motive for the attack.

In other news, the Obama administration and Senate Democrats wrangled all day with Senate Republicans in an attempt to settle on a compromise tax plan before the “fiscal cliff” arrives tomorrow. As of this evening, no deal had been forged.

Meanwhile, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has been hospitalized with a blood clot. It is believed that the condition is a result of the fall and concussion she sustained earlier this month.

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

Thanks to C. Cantoni, Fjordman, heroyalwhyness, Insubria, JD, Jerry Gordon, Kitman, 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.

Europe and the Coming Caliphate: The Political-Cultural Scenario

Hans-Peter Raddatz is a well-known German author and scholar who specializes in Islamic issues. An interview with him was featured here in translation last year.

The following post is the first part of a four-part translation of an article by Dr. Raddatz that was published in issue Nr. 5/2012 October of Die Neue Ordnung (pdf; table of contents here). It concerns most recent book by Bat Ye’or, and its significance as the Islamization of Europe continues to accelerate.

We owe a great debt to JLH for undertaking the translation of this important work.

Hans-Peter Raddatz

Europe and the Coming Caliphate
The Systemic Background of an Important Book

1. The Political-Cultural Scenario

In the last two editions of this journal, a book (Bat Ye’or, Europe, Globalization and the Coming Caliphate — Plymouth, 2011) was cited, which describes in detail the manifold Islamic activities in service of the installation and securing of a dependably growing Muslim society in Europe. As an established historian, the author presents far-reaching connections to the discussion, highly relevant to the future of Europe and supported by documents that either have been long ignored or completely unknown. Her work casts an informative light on the relationship of the Euro elites to both state and society, and is worth a closer look. Universally supported by he Europeans themselves, the unchecked growth in European territory of the Umma — the Muslim community — under its own law, is a project of historic dimensions into which Islamic world organizations have been investing billions of dollars for decades and harnessing the entire ruling class of the EU.

In this context there developed among the representatives of the so-called Islam Dialogue a supra-institutional movement, which — already with the beginnings of semi-totalitarian characteristics of a dogmatically prescribed “tolerance” — qualifies for affiliation with the radical tradition of the old extremist right and left. At the very least, a clear majority of its protagonists — represented by appropriate “officials” and “experts” in all the institutions of the EU and its member states — is distinguished by the same hostility to the civil state and the Judaeo-Chrisitian culture which was displayed, especially in Germany, by their predecessors in the socialist and/or fascist systems. “Precisely we Germans” became the wingèd cliché which signaled, and still does, that they will not, on the basis of past experience, keep a skeptical distance, but rather show a special readiness to be subjugated to whatever conformity or “mainstream” is called up.

The Coming Caliphate documents why and by what methods the ideological advocacy for Jew- and Christian-hostile Islam is reviving ant-Semitism and is sharpening the hostility to the Church which arose in the Enlightenment until it is a hate-filled anti-Christianity. So it is not astonishing that the bogeyman, Israel, caused the formation of a cult surrounding the Palestinian “folk victims” and — 60 years after the Holocaust — placards are again being carried through German cities with the old/new demand, “Jews out”. And since Islam is not only shooting rockets at the Jews, but is also persecuting Christians throughout the Middle East — killing more than 100,000 annually according to Vatican internal statistics; OSCE: “one every 5 minutes” — it strikes not only a good tone, but an interculturally profitable one, to assume an increasingly aggressive attitude toward the Church and include its representatives — especially the bishops. It s understood in this process that the protagonists — the greatest exponents of world Christianity — be defamed in the crudest way; also measures taken against persons like Bar Ye’or, who do not describe Islam according to intercultural instructions, but according to historically verified understanding. Beyond this, Muslims can become the victims in the past by making Christians responsible for the violence of the Crusades. While the syndrome of modern short-term thinking becomes operable here, blurring our sense of time and forcing a persistent acceleration, we can deduce from the “quality” of the violence the retrogression of modern time to the pre-modern.

As described in the article on Islamophobia, and also as is current among the rightist and leftist extremists, who in their hostility to our culture are as one with the anti-West jihad, any existence which is not a part of the “movement” or even opposed to it is a nihilistic existence which must be undone, a life that must be extinguished, in order to “eradicate” the danger of an example for imitators. Tolerance, especially in favor of pre-modern cultures, is an open-handed virtue which, in suitable circumstances, can become as deadly a cure as the left-right extremist dogmas. Coupled with the self-reflexive, socially proper malleability of the person in a communicative mass state, it provides the elites a power whose potential for programmed worldly salvation — ergo destruction — by far exceeds the potential of its predecessors in use of class and race.

Saturday Night’s All Right for Fighting — At the Asylum Center

Another Saturday night, another brawl at the asylum center. Our Norwegian correspondent The Observer has translated an article about the latest fracas amongst the culture-enrichers:

The article concerns a brawl at an asylum center in Mysen (southeastern part of Norway) involving illegal immigrants, oops, I mean asylum seekers from Somalia and Afghanistan.

It’s good to know that the Norwegian authorities will focus all their money and energy on fighting the extremely violent and dangerous online ‘right-wing’ Counterjihad community in Norway and not the innocent and oppressed little lambs that have been ‘brutally’ oppressed by the racist Norwegian populace.

The translated article from NRK:

One person hospitalized after mass brawl at asylum center

One person has been hospitalized after a huge brawl at Mysebu asylum center in Mysen in Østfold on Saturday night.

According to the police the brawl involved asylum seekers from Somalia and Afghanistan.

Police was notified of the incident at 7:55pm, says Magnar Tinjar, the manager of operations for Follo Police District. One person was admitted to the hospital in Fredrikstad, and a second individual was brought to the accident and emergency department.

“The message that we received was that the person who was taken to hospital was to be checked for a possible fractured arm. There were no reports of any serious injuries,” says Tinjar to NRK.no.

Who is Violent in Germany?

Steen sent me a tip a few days ago about a video entitled “Munich is Watching”, a public-service production reminding the citizens of Munich to be ever-vigilant about possible eruptions of the inherent racism to which all Germans are subject:

What’s staggering about this video is the knee-jerk assumption that interracial violence in Germany is more likely to come from the blond-haired blue-eyed indigenes rather than the dusky-skinned newcomers. The evidence — both statistical and anecdotal — overwhelmingly supports the opposite conclusion.

Ordinary Germans are aware of this discrepancy. They know that the official government line is a blatant lie. They realize that murder, assault, rape, arson, theft, and vandalism are far more likely to be committed by immigrants and their descendants than “persons of German background”.

They also understand the likely consequences of speaking the truth, so they generally keep quiet about such matters — at least in public.

Our Canadian correspondent Rembrandt Clancy has juxtaposed the “Munich is Watching” video with a translated and subtitled video about the recent tongue-slashing da’wa in Bonn to provide a snapshot of Politically Correct Multiculturalism in Germany at the cusp of the new year.

Who is Violent in Germany?
by Rembrandt Clancy

An incident in Germany was reported earlier on Gates of Vienna (26 December, 2012) under the title “Attack in Bonn” . It concerns two men who sliced the tongue of an Indian exchange student after he refused their demand to convert to Islam. The Baron wondered what “spin” the media would place on this “brown-on-brown” violence. As it turned out, there are two facets to the aftermath of this violent event, the press reaction and the surprise context given to it in the Christmas message of Federal President Joachim Gauck.

First there is the press, which appears to acknowledge at least the suspicion that “Islamists” (often interchangeable with “Salafists”) are involved, but not Islam or Muslims (see video included herewith). For readers who would like a reminder of the basic story, a fairly typical summary, dated 30 December 2012, is taken from an article in the General-Anzeiger (30 December, 2012):

“As police spokesman Harry Kolbe announced on Thursday, the student has been able to leave the hospital in the meantime… At 10 o’clock PM on Monday, according to the police, the two perpetrators … asked the 24-year old student out of the blue what his religious affiliation was and demanded that he convert to Islam.

As the 24-year old wanted to keep walking, he was knocked down from behind and the men told him that if he did not convert, he was a sinner, whose tongue had to be cut out.

Then the perpetrators succeeded in making a deep cut in the tongue of the student who was dazed from the blows. Finally the two men drove away in the direction of Poppelsdorf …

According to police, two days after Christmas the young man, who was deeply in shock, could be questioned. Police spokesman Kolbe characterised what he told them as “very credible” and added that the police investigative group can not rule out an Islamist background…”

The accompanying video on the incident is a report from the a subregional (local) studio in Bonn called Lokalzeit:

Lokalzeit belongs to the WDR (Westdeutscher Rundfunk — West German Broadcasting), a public broadcaster with headquarters in Cologne (NRW). The report includes an interview with a spokesman for the Muslim Council in Bonn, Moussa Acharki, who paraphrases the abrogated Sura 2.256 “There shall be no compulsion in religion” (The Koran: N. J. Dawood, Penguin), a sura which some say (Sabatina James) Muslims use when they are in the minority, instead of such Suras as 9.5 “…slay the idolaters wherever you find them… and lie in ambush everywhere for them” (The Koran, N. J. Dawoord, Penguin).

The second facet is the unexpected context given to the attack on the Indian student by the release on the same day of Federal President Gauck’s Christmas address (Spiegel Online, 24 December 2012). Islam-critical sites reacted strongly to one sentence in particular which, broadly speaking, they consider a defamation of the German people. It reads as follows:

Gates of Vienna News Feed 12/29/2012

A Bronx woman named Erica Menendez has been charged with murder for pushing a man under a subway train at a station in Queens. A “hate crime” has been added to the charge, because the defendant allegedly said that she had hated Muslims and Hindus ever since 9-11, and that was her motive for the murder.

In other news, the French Constitutional Council, the highest court in France, has overturned the new socialist government’s widely-reviled 75% tax rate on the country’s wealthiest citizens.

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

Thanks to C. Cantoni, Fjordman, Insubria, JP, Nilk, 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.

On Echo Chambers and Media Polarization

As we mentioned a couple of days ago, a Norwegian university professor named Jill Walker Rettberg has helped to establish a new academic fellowship whose purpose will be to investigate extremism on the Internet. The professor pointed out that web extremists are able to inhabit their own “echo chamber” or “filter bubble”. As far as I could determine, the only extremists mentioned by name in the interview with her were Anders Behring Breivik and Fjordman.

Nevertheless, Prof. Rettberg insists that the new position will look at all types of extremism, and not just “right-wing extremism”. She left the following comment on the post earlier today:

Hey, thanks for linking to the article — we hope to have applications from people interested in examining any kind of extremism, we’re not simply interested in right-wing extremism. If you look at the actual job advertisement you’ll see that we’re trying to be open.

The whole idea of an echo chamber or the filter bubble is that we’re ALL in echo chambers and we have to make an effort if we want to see and hear view points from outside of it. The internet appears to exacerbate that. You can use it to find anything, but studies have also shown that political debate, for instance, is more polarised in blogs than on television. So yes, of course I recognise that I’m also in an echo chamber.

In response to Prof. Rettberg, our longtime reader, commenter, and contributor Egghead left the following comment on the same post. It’s worth reproducing in its entirety:

Jill Walker Rettberg:

Your basic assumption that anti-jihad blogs are right-wing extremist blogs is insulting and incorrect.

Who are you to label an anti-jihad point of view — which is backed up by over 1,400 years of evidence of Muslim violence and jihad war — as right-wing extremism?

Anyone with a grasp of both past history and current events would understand that the real extremism is exhibited by well-documented actions of Muslims who have always used — and still use — torture, rape, kidnap, mass murder, poll tax, and dhimmi slave status to clear Muslim countries of all non-Muslims — and also to conquer non-Muslim countries for the ummah.

Your reference to the article that claims that…

“Freedom Is Worth It”

Last Thursday Geert Wilders was interviewed by the state broadcasting service in the Netherlands. He discussed the Islamization of Europe, and in particular the “Moroccan problem” in the Netherlands. He also spoke out against the European juggernaut, decrying the surrender of Dutch sovereignty to Brussels.

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

Transcript (with the original time stamps):

Gates of Vienna News Feed 12/28/2012

Acting on a tip, the Nigerian army raided a bomb-making factory in the town of Kaduna. Five members of the Islamic terror group Boko Haram were killed in the raid, and two others wounded. Numerous completed IEDs were discovered at the facility.

In other news, a pig’s head was left in front of the door of an “Islamic centre” in the British city of Leicester. Three people have been arrested in connection with the crime.

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

Thanks to C. Cantoni, Fjordman, Insubria, JD, JP, 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.

Harassment, Tolerance, Security, and “Scum Villages”

We posted earlier this month on the new “scum villages” proposed by the Dutch authorities as housing for antisocial elements. The projects are to be built using retired shipping containers, and will allow undesirables to be segregated and kept away from more well-behaved citizens.

The following report from Der Tagesspiegel points out that the “scum villages” are being implemented by a left-wing coalition in the municipal government of Amsterdam, with no help from Geert Wilders or other right-wingers. The champions of tolerance are planning to segregate the intolerant to make life more bearable for the tolerant burghers of Amsterdam.

Many thanks to Hermes for the translation:

Amsterdam: No tolerance for the enemies of tolerance

Foreigners look on in astonishment at Amsterdam. How can a city which appreciates personal freedoms like few others forge such plans? As reported, in the future Amsterdam wants to forcibly resettle in separate container villages persons who repeatedly harass gays, immigrants or other people. Once there, they would be rehabilitated by social workers and police officers over a period of six months, and after this period they would be allowed to return to their homes.

The project is set to begin next year. The City Council, which is composed of Social Democrats, liberals and Leftists-Greens, is currently looking for accommodations in caravans or containers.

Discarding people in container settlements without their having been convicted? Sounds unusual on the part of Social Democrats, Greens and Leftists; such concepts are known to be those of the political right. It is understandable from this that the repression is primarily directed against the enemies of tolerance, homophobes and xenophobes who poison the environment.

Efforts are made by the city government to add nuances after the headline-grabbing media reports abroad. Tahira Limon, spokeswoman for the city administration, emphasizes that the project is directed only to the most serious cases, the number of which lie at an average of seven to ten a year. “Antisocial behaviors such as urinating in public places is not sufficient for this. It’s about systematic and specific intimidation of other people.”

Examples? A lesbian couple who is being bullied over a long period. A youngster who testifies in court against a neighbour, and whose family is then exposed to a daily gauntlet. Amsterdam — says Tahira Limon — wants to stand for the victim, who in the past often had to bear the consequences and had to look for a new home. And as Mayor Eberhard van der Laan says, that was a “world turned upside down”.

The project, which in the Netherlands is colloquially dubbed as “Aso-villages”, will be made possible through an administrative stipulation. In order to maintain the public order, the administrative law allows the mayor to relocate citizens. In this way, state legislation does not have to be altered; the decision lies within the local community as well as local heads of the police and the prosecutor’s office. In this case they receive support from the Amsterdam housing corporations. But this concept must apply also to the free sector and homeowners.

For many Dutch people, this concept sounds familiar. It was not long ago that the controversial right-wing populist Geert Wilders suggested that people who repeatedly cause trouble within their environment should be accommodated in separate settlements. His motto was: “(Carry) the scum away from the neighbourhood”, to which the outcry was immediate and fitted to Wilders’ dramatic rhetoric.

So now a socialist mayor introduces via the back door what the right-wing populists could never have introduced themselves with their tendency to administer justice? In Amsterdam City Hall reassurances were made that the container flats would not be concentrated in a single place, but they would be scattered in smaller units. But the problem is: will this remain so?

Where Will the Juggernaut Stop This Time?

*** Update from Dymphna ***

My apologies to our readers. Usually when anything regarding Christian history — and particularly early Roman Catholicism — is proposed for posting, I have a look at it first. Though the Baron is widely read in European history, matters concerning the Church have never been his forte.

Thus, the proposition below regarding the Jesuits, specifically the contention that they were in existence at the time specified, got by him. As he said to me this morning, given the speculative nature of the essay, he didn’t pursue that point. But it is my failure to read the original essay that has created this problem.

*   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *

Ignatius Loyola didn’t found the Society of Jesus until the mid 16th century or so. You can read about him and the Jesuits (the Jesus-ites, so to speak) here. In this simplified version you will see where his impetus to “convert the Moors” arose.

One of the commenters on that thread mentions Jack Chick as the source in this essay for the story about the Jesuits. Oh my. I’ve never read any of his tracts but I am familiar with his approach. Evangelical Christianity has had to work hard to overcome the anti-intellectual stigma forced on them via guilt-by-association attacks, just because Chick happens to be an evangelist also. However, his anti-historical and anti-Catholic animus have supplied detractors of Catholicism with some red meat while also giving “evangelism” a bad name. Chick is definitely an aid to aggressive atheism.

We have always rigorously abided by the dictum that once something is posted it remains posted. We don’t push anything down the memory hole. So MC’s post stands, but with caveats.

Had I been feeling well enough to read what MC clearly labels his “speculation” I’d have had him remove that section and edit some of the rest. But I wasn’t and therefore he didn’t. Thus (in my Pollyanna belief about “an ill wind”) I can assure you we will be more careful in the future. Since you never see what doesn’t make it onto the blog, there’s no way for you to know we’re usually more careful.

As for MC’s goof, well… next time he’ll know that search engines are helpful when making assertions. “Google is your best friend” sometimes; this is one of those times. However, the assertion that there is a “blood libel” here mystifies me. If I take MC to task for his failure to source his material, I also question the wisdom of any commenter who ends his criticism with “disgusting”. That appears to be falling into the same tar bucket that Chick inhabits.

MC is a valuable reporter for all things Sderot and I hope he will continue to send material. He’s doing important work as our correspondent and I hope he is willing to continue.

Our Israeli correspondent MC offers some speculation about the first wave of Islamic invasion in the Near East, North Africa, and Europe. He notes its relevance to what is unfolding now throughout the Western world during this, the Third Wave of the Great Jihad.

No News From Sderot — A Speculation
by MC

There is no news from Sderot, so I am going to speculate.

There was once a story from an escaped Jesuit that Mohammed created Islam at the behest of Rome in order to clear out opposition from North Africa and wrest Jerusalem from the Eastern Roman empire that was based in Constantinople.

Whilst there is little to confirm this speculation, the interesting part of it, should it be anywhere near true, is that having taken Jerusalem, it would appear that the Islamic hoards refused to honour the agreement and give the Holy Land to the Pope of that time. So the “crusade” by Islam had to be met and halted by a counter-crusade from Rome and its allies (this bit is factual).

Why is this relevant? Because in this day and age it is achingly obvious that Islam is once more being sponsored by Western governments. A similar question then arises: Will those Western governments be able to stop the juggernaut before we are all consumed? 

First, however, we have to satisfy ourselves as to why are our respective governments so head over heels for Islam. Why have they ‘fallen off of their camels’ for Cairo? What is in it for them?

Let us take a look at London. Why would a Conservative government imprison Tommy Robinson, kangaroo-style?

Of course Cameron’s government is not Conservative. It is not even conservative with a small “c”. In kow-towing to Clegg it has become left of centre. To stay in power Cameron must court Clegg.

Conspiracy theorists would say that both of them are only puppets of the New World Order, so what does it matter? And if UKIP attains power, they too will become NWO puppets as their leaders have their prices met and even exceeded (or maybe this is where the current paedophilia fashion comes into play). Somehow the powers behind the thrones will pervert all and sundry.

But why the love affair with Islam? Is it the violent nature of Islam that so beguiles our leaders (formal or informal)? Or is it the huge wealth of Islam that buys their loyalty?

Santa Brings Us Another Win!

Gavin Boby of Law and Freedom reports on another successful mosque-busting operation:

Santa Brings Us Another Win!

Few of our liberal-left opponents have any real guts.

We get plenty of abuse, which is one of the things that keeps us going.

Otherwise, it tends to be the moral exhibitionism of people anxious for the good opinion of those who agree with them. People with such needs tend to be too selfish to do much. And there are few other reasons — e.g. being a treacherous nutcase — for a non-Muslim to cut a pro-Islam pose.

Substantive opposition is usually self serving, especially if money is involved.

E.g. if you sue someone for non payment of a bill, their response is that it is beneath their principles to cough up to an Islamophobe. Or if a BBC guy wants to pose as macho, he’ll pick on an Islamophobe.

This behaviour is as far removed from principle as you can get, based on the assumption that an Islamophobe is a weak target. And they get a surprise.

And this was the case with the Cricklewood mosque in Camden. We briefed a printer, who shafted mis-served us. When we informed him that there might have been a problem, he told us baldly that the issue was “sensitive”. I.e. it was our own fault and he kept the money.

Gates of Vienna News Feed 12/27/2012

Jacob Zuma, the president of South Africa, has told his fellow South African blacks that they should not own dogs. He says ownership of dogs is a white thing, and if blacks do it, they are just trying to copy whites.

In other news, the S&P has downgraded the debt rating of three Egyptian banks from B- to C. Meanwhile, the purchasing power of the average Italian family dropped by 4% in 2012.

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

Thanks to Andy Bostom, C. Cantoni, Fjordman, Insubria, Jerry Gordon, Steen, 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 Day We Lost the “War on Terror”

The following essay by Henrik Ræder Clausen places the recent hudna between Hamas and Israel in its proper historical context. It has been adapted from an article published last Sunday at Europe News. See the original article for photos, maps, and a video.

November 21st, 2012: The day we lost the “War on Terror”
by Henrik Ræder Clausen
December 23, 2012

It may have escaped the attention of most, but on November 21st 2012, we suffered the final defeat in the War on Terror declared by President George W. Bush on September 20th 2001. After more than 11 years of fighting, 56,900 American casualties, cumulative expenses of between 1.2 and 2.7 trillion dollars and a very complicated series of diplomatic and military alliances, the aim to defeat terror was abolished in Cairo, Egypt on that day.

Here, the triumvirate of Egyptian President Mohamed Mursi, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal announced a ceasefire between Hamas and Israel following a week of intense fighting between the terrorist organisation and the Israeli army.

Now, the word ‘ceasefire’ may take on different meanings for those who want peace as opposed to those who want war. For those who want peace, a ceasefire is a prelude to a permanent peace agreement, and makes sense in that perspective. On the other hand, for those who want war, halting the fighting is primarily an opportunity to regain strength to take up fighting again, and in some circumstances a protection against crushing defeat. Islam has a specific term, ‘hudna’, for this kind of ceasefire. Based on the example of Muhammad, it may last no longer than 10 years, and can be broken earlier if deemed beneficial for Islam.

Courtesy of Challah hu Akbar, let us have a closer look at the ceasefire agreement:

Understanding Regarding Ceasefire in Gaza Strip

1.		Israel shall stop all hostilities on the Gaza Strip land, sea and air including incursions and targeting of individuals.
2.		All Palestinian factions shall stop all hostilities from the Gaza Strip against Israel, including rocket attacks, and attacks along the border
3.		Opening the crossings and facilitating the movement of people and transfer of goods, and refraining from restricting residents free movement, and targeting residents in border areas and procedures of implementation shall be dealt with after 24 hours from the start of the ceasefire.
4.		Other matters as maybe requested shall be addressed.

Implementation Mechanism:

1.		Setting up of the zero hour for the Ceasefire Understanding to enter into effect.
2.		Egypt shall receive assurances from each party that the party commit to what was agreed upon.
3.		Each party shall commit itself not to perform any acts that would breach this understanding. In case of any observations, Egypt — as the sponsor of this understanding — shall be informed to follow up.

First, and most important: This agreement blocks Israel from taking any military action against Hamas or other terrorist organisations in Gaza. Without a credible threat of military action, Hamas is now at liberty to rebuild its military infrastructure, its rocket launcher sites, and not least to replenish its somewhat depleted rocket stocks. Hamas will not voluntarily abstain from this.

Reciprocally, Hamas and the other terrorist organisations in Gaza shall stop attacking Israel. Given that their purpose in life is the annihilation of Israel, that can only be a temporary measure.

Then, Israel is to facilitate the movement of people and goods at border crossings. Given that the borders were never closed, not even during Pillar of Defence, that is a somewhat unclear requirement, and could easily become a bone of contention if either Hamas or Egypt deems it insufficiently fulfilled.

The hindrances to free movement in and out of Gaza came into place in June 2007 after extensive fighting between Hamas and Fatah, leaving over 600 Palestinians dead in the power struggle. After Hamas had gained undisputed control of Gaza, Israel and Egypt implemented stricter border control, blocking transport of materials deemed of military importance. That border control, however, has been perforated by an extensive set of tunnels under the Egypt-Gaza border.

The final clause of the ceasefire agreement holds another surprise — Egypt, not some neutral international institution like OSCE or the United Nations, is to oversee the implementation. Given that Egypt is now ruled by the Muslim Brotherhood, and Hamas is a branch of the Brotherhood, this does not seem fair, impartial or even reasonably reliable.

What makes Hamas a “terrorist organisation”?

The answer is trivially easy. Hamas is a terrorist organisation because it organizes terror. Anyone who has seen the images of Israeli children running for shelter or being protected by their parents for fear of incoming Hamas rockets will know this to be true. It is not rocket science (pun intended) to realize that a key aim of Hamas is to indiscriminately terrorize the citizens of Israel.

The aims of Hamas are not particular secret, except perhaps to some journalists and a few politicians who have not read the appropriate research papers. A Report on Hamas, presented to the US House of Representatives on October 14th 1993, has this telling quote about Hamas and its motivation:

A New Academic Discipline: Fjordmanology

This morning Fjordman sent out the following tweet:

An entire academic Fjordman-industry is now developing. When will Norway produce the first PhD thesis in fjordmanology?

He was referring to an article in På Høyden, the online newspaper of the University of Bergen. I don’t have a formal translation, but using Google, and with additional help from Henrik Ræder Clausen, I was able to piece together the latest news from Modern Multicultural Norway.

A Norwegian professor of “digital culture” named Jill Walker Rettberg has helped midwife a new fellowship that will investigate extremism on the Internet. According to På Høyden:

“22 July forced us to see that there is a lot of extremism on the net,” says Professor Jill Walker Rettberg. Now the Department of Linguistic, Literary and Aesthetic Studies has announced a fellowship that is designated for research on extreme speech on the web.

The new scholarship was added to the Department of Linguistic, Literary and Aesthetic Studies. “There has been little research on extremism on the Internet, at least from a humanist perspective,” says Prof. Walker Rettberg.

Generally speaking, she is positive about the internet:

“The network is global. It’s wonderful if, for instance, one has a very specific disease or a child with special problem — then one can make contact with the few others who are in the same situation. But it is also easier to find other people who have the same and perhaps equally quirky viewpoints as oneself. One talks about a filter bubble or an echo chamber — it means that one only sees those who are similar to oneself,” says Walker Rettberg.

She adds: “Analyses can focus on language, rhetoric, ideology, visual instruments, aesthetics, discourse or social networks… We want to build up expertise in this field. The debate has shown that there are many views — but there is little scientific research.”

Norwegian academics are known to be scrupulously fair and even-handed in their dispassionate scholarly investigations, so we can be certain that the new discipline will take at least a cursory look at left-wing extremists, and maybe even Islamic radicals.

However, the reader is left in no doubt about the real meat of the matter — the dreaded Fjordman:

Gates of Vienna News Feed 12/26/2012

The Yemeni interior ministry is asking tribal leaders to help them find three Europeans, two Finns and one Austrian, who were kidnapped last Friday. Reports indicate that their captors are demanding several million dollars ransom for the kidnapped hostages.

In other news, pirates hijacked an Italian ship off the coast of Nigeria and brought it safely to shore along with its four-man crew. Somali pirates generally hijack ships to extort ransom, but their Nigerian counterparts are said to be more interested in the ships’ cargo.

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

Thanks to C. Cantoni, Fjordman, Insubria, Jerry Gordon, 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.

Radio Free Scandinavia

As reported here last week, Gates of Vienna has received two emails from Sveriges Television (SVT), the Swedish state broadcaster. The first one was from the executive producer of “Agenda SVT”, and the second from a lawyer in SVT’s legal department. Both messages objected to a video embedded in a post from last spring entitled “A Loss of Faith in Sweden as a Democracy”, and cited copyright issues as the reason for their concern.

Last summer’s decision by the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, written by Richard Posner no less, makes it quite clear that the embedding of a video uploaded by someone else cannot constitute a violation of copyright — only the uploader of the video and the hosting service may be considered liable. This decision applies to citizens of the United States who live in the United States, which is what the proprietors of this blog are.

When I outlined the above information in my reply to the second email, I received an automated notice (in Swedish, but clear enough in machine translation) saying that the esteemed lawyer was on leave until the 7th of January. That’s a nice long Christmas winter holiday those SVT apparatchiks get! So we will have to wait a couple of weeks until the next act of this drama unfolds.

Copyright may be a genuine concern with SVT, but I have my doubts that it is the real issue. Why, eight months after it was originally posted, did the video suddenly draw the attention of the legal department at Swedish state TV? Even now, after the recent brouhaha, it has been viewed fewer than four thousand times — hardly a matter of great concern.

A Swedish reader wrote us with an interesting theory of what might really be going on:

The threat of legal action from SVT against Gates of Vienna may have a covert purpose which you may be missing. My guess is that they are hoping for a legal fight — going to court in Sweden. The Swedish kangaroo court would rule in favor of SVT. Since your blog would then have been convicted of a crime, SVT and the Swedish court will be able to have the Swedish government, the government of Norway, and perhaps the EU itself block access to GoV within Europe and wherever else they can.

I tend towards paranoia myself, so I’m not ready to rule out such a possible scenario. Other Scandinavians may want to weigh in with their own evaluation of the likelihood of any devious schemes. What do you think is the meaning behind SVT’s action, and in particular the significance of its timing?

A reader in Norway pointed out another aspect of the affair that I hadn’t considered:

Attack in Bonn

An Indian student in Bonn reports that on Christmas Eve he was attacked and injured by two men who demanded that he convert to Islam. The media generally have difficulties finding the proper spin in reports of “brown-on-brown” violence, so it will be interesting to see how the German MSM handles the follow-up on this story.

Many thanks to Hermes for translating this article from Express.de:

Christmas Eve in Bonn — Indian student apparently attacked by Islamists

Islamist attack on Christmas Eve? An Indian student was attacked by two men on 24 December — they wanted him to convert to Islam.

When the police arrived at 10:10 pm in Endenich, the 24-year-old was bleeding from the head and the mouth. He was treated by an emergency doctor. The young man told the police that he had been walking on the road to a restaurant in Bonn-Poppelsdorf, and as he walked past no. 119 in Sebastian Street, he was approached by two unknown men who asked him to convert to Islam.

Bonn state protection office active in this issue

He wanted to continue on his way, but the two men caught him from behind and knocked him to the ground. In the course of events one of the suspects succeeded in inflicting a cut on the student’s tongue, who was dazed by the blows he received.

After the two offenders fled, the student was able to attract the attention of a passer-by who helped him and called an ambulance. The 24-year-old was taken to a nearby hospital.

The police began searching for the perpetrators immediately, but with no success. With this act having an apparent political motivation, Bonn state protection became involved in the investigation, witnesses were interrogated, and physical evidence as well as the clothing of the victim was secured.

A Rosetta Stone for Bill Warner, Part 13: Danish

This is the thirteenth in a series of subtitled versions of Dr. Bill Warner’s talk from last summer in Tennessee.

Thanks to the steady stream of translations, Dr. Warner’s carefully researched seminar about the history of Islam has been seen by hundreds of thousands of people on both sides of the Atlantic.

The Danish version of Dr. Warner’s talk is below, and Russian is still in the pipeline.

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

Arabic	German	Russian *
Czech	Hungarian	Slovak
Danish	Norwegian	Spanish
English	Polish	Swedish
French	Portuguese	Turkish

(* = assigned but not yet received; † = received but not yet posted)

The English transcript is available here.

Danish transcript:

Islamophobia: “A Problematic Concept”

After months of waiting, an Austrian anti-sharia activist has received an answer from his government to his request for its reaction to the Turkish prime minister’s advance interference with the Organization of Security Cooperation (OSCE) meeting in Warsaw last October.

Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff sends this introductory note to accompany the reply from the Austrian ministry of foreign affairs:

Prior to the annual Human Dimension Implementation Meeting of OSCE in Warsaw, Poland, Turkey’s prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan declared that Islamophobia needed to be recognized as a crime against humanity. He also made the following boast:

“I was able to include Islamophobia as a hate crime in the final statement of an international meeting in Warsaw.”

This prompted Harald Fiegl, a dedicated Austrian Counterjihadist and representative of Mission Europa Netzwerk Karl Martell, to write a letter to the Austrian minister of foreign affairs and ask whether the Austrian government was aware of Mr. Erdogan’s claim, and what it planned to do about this. It is not standard diplomatic practice for a prime minister to add anything to the final statement of a conference that has not yet taken place.

It took three months and many interventions in the foreign minister’s cabinet to receive an answer.

Here is the letter to Mr. Fiegl from the minister of foreign affairs, kindly translated by JLH:

Federal Ministry for European and International Affairs
Vienna, December 21, 2012
Mr. Harald Fiegl

Dear Mr. Fiegl:

Vice Chancellor and Minister for European and International Affairs, Dr. Michael Spindelegger, has requested that I reply to your communication of September 20.

I am familiar with the cited discussion and I share your view that under international law the concept “Islamophobia” is not straightforward, and is therefore a problematic concept. Proceeding from your interpretations, we may assume that “Islamophobia” (hostility to Islam per se) — without the further qualification of criminal action — does not as a rule satisfy the qualifications for crimes against humanity.

Terry Jones Banned From the Schengen Area

A couple of weeks ago pastor Terry Jones of Stand Up America Now, in collaboration with the Pakistani ex-Muslim Imran Firasat, released movie a move called The Innocent Prophet (watch it here).

The immediate fallout from the movie’s release was that Imran Firasat had his asylum revoked and will be deported from Spain, his adopted home. As an apostate from Islam, when Mr. Firasat is deported to his native Pakistan he will likely face the death penalty.

Now Terry Jones has been forbidden entry to Spain or any other country that has signed the Schengen Agreement. Below is the press release that was just sent out by Stand Up America Now:

Dr. Terry Jones — Banned from Spain and Schengen States

As of December 10, 2012, Dr. Terry Jones has been officially banned from entering Spain or any other country of the Schengen States, by the Spanish Ministry of the Interior for a period of two years. The Schengen States include: Germany, France, Belgium, Luxembourg, Portugal, Italy, Greece, Austria, Denmark, Finland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Sweden, Norway, Lithuania, Hungary, Poland, Slovenia, Estonia, Latvia, Iceland, Netherlands, Malta.

Spain has banned Dr. Jones because of his involvement with the YouTube video, “The Innocent Prophet”, stating that, “the video has offensive references to the Koran and to Islam which creates a hazardous situation for Spain.”

Dr. Jones had been invited to Madrid, Spain by Imran Firasat to hold a joint press conference announcing the release of the movie “The Innocent Prophet”. Imran has been involved in the co-production of the Youtube, The Innocent Prophet, with Terry Jones and Stand Up America Now. The Innocent Prophet was released to the public on Youtube on December 15, 2012.

Gates of Vienna News Feed 12/25/2012

Well, the news feed is back. I can’t say we’re fully up to speed yet, but the engine is consistently firing on four cylinders, and occasionally on five or six.

A young African-American lady named Tawana Brawley gained notoriety in New York State twenty-five years ago by accusing several white men of abducting her, holding her prisoner, and raping her repeatedly. After a firestorm in the media, Ms. Brawley’s accusations turned out to be utterly bogus, and the men she falsely accused won lawsuits against her and the race-baiting “civil rights activists” who helped her concoct her story. Al Sharpton eventually paid up (with a little help from his friends), but Tawana Brawley disappeared, and the judgment was never served against her.

A New York newspaper has discovered Ms. Brawley, now 40 years old, living in Hopewell, Virginia and commuting to her nursing job in Richmond. She is licensed to work in her field under two different names, neither of them Brawley.

In other news, the French actor Gérard Depardieu recently moved to Belgium in disgust over the high rate of taxation in France, which he says took 85% of his income last year. Now Russian President Vladimir Putin has offered Mr. Depardieu a Russian passport, and says the actor will be welcomed if he wants to move to Russia.

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

Thanks to C. Cantoni, Caroline Glick, Fjordman, Insubria, Steen, 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.

Merry Christmas to the Gates of Vienna Family

This song by Robert Earl Keene makes me cry every single time I listen. Not big tears; it simply plucks nerve endings from some Christmases Past. The Baron thinks I may have posted this before — could be, since it was first put up on You Tube in 2006, and I like to repeat a good thing. Evidently others feel the same way since it now has the better part of two million views.

You may have to be an American to understand why this fond reflection on lower middle class family traditions sounds such a responsive chord, or why it seems so deft and so lovingly rendered. Trust me, Robert Earle Keene doesn’t strike one condescending note.

In the song he mentions that one of his kin “drove in from Harlingen”. That’s Harlingen, Texas, after the Frisian town of the same name in the Netherlands. The town in Texas wins awards for its all-American character.

Notice that all the Christmas songs he includes are actually church hymns. Once those very same tunes resounded on the bustling downtown sidewalks and later in shopping malls, playing incessantly through the loudspeakers all season long. That was back when the “season” began around the first of December.

Those times are gone. Where you can hear the music at all, usually in some huge indoor mall, there is only “Winter Wonderland” or something equally bland on offer. God forbid anyone’s fragile sensibilities be offended by songs of straggling shepherds or the random angel of peace. As this aggressive secularization spreads into our holidays, the crowds are noticeably thinning.

Those two factors may or may not be causally linked.

So you can sing along, here are the lyrics:

How to Stop a Mosque in Your Area

Gavin Boby of Law and Freedom paid a visit to Australia back in September under the sponsorship of the Q Society. Gavin told his audience that Australia is ten or fifteen years behind Britain in the process of Islamization, but is bound to catch up quickly.

He then laid out some general guidelines for resisting the establishment of new mosques, using his own successful experiences before local councils in England opposing planning applications for “interfaith centers”.

Many thanks to Vlad Tepes for uploading this video:

Previous posts about Gavin Boby and the Law and Freedom Foundation:

Ottawa In Winter

Our wonderful videographer-on-call, Vlad Tepes (peace be upon that brave man) created an evocative montage of video and stills (the latter by Bear). For this, and for so much more, seasoned greetings to the Baron’s colleague and my good friend… the one who rescues me when the B. has to travel and I need an image or an embedded video.

This wintry confection he made certainly brings back some New England Christmases for me — the frost-rimed rhythms of urban life continuing on despite the weather. I couldn’t help but smile to think of the panicked reaction if this were to happen in Washington, D.C.

There is lots to see here; I watched it several times, looking at what appear to be tiny onion domes on one church, and the steeply pitched roofs everywhere. Even in the snow and slush, someone is moving…

Now that it’s quit raining ‘round here, I’m going out to cut some holly for the supper table. The future Baron will be home for Christmas evening and we’ll have roast beef in his honor. Kind of like the fatted calf, only it’s a very small roast and that boy — oops, man — has never had even a prodigal moment. (Yes, we are lucky indeed.)

Merry Christmas once more.

“Germans Are Considered Easy Prey”

As a lacuna in today’s Christmas cheer, consider this article from Sezession about the ascendancy of Lebanese and Kurdish criminal gangs in parts of Germany. The criminal “youths” are able to act with near impunity, with the police and society at large almost helpless in the face of their violent criminality.

Many thanks to Hermes for the translation:

Germany: a “society of prey” — Kurdish-Lebanese clans and the helplessness of the constitutional state

While the federal government and the opposition in the Bundestag adamantly regard immigration as an indispensable contribution to Germany, the intensity of the conflicts between some groups of immigrants and German society is steadily increasing.

One example of this are many social problems caused by members of Kurdish-Lebanese clans in Berlin, Bremen, and Essen, cities which according to declarations from judicial authorities are out of control. As a consequence, the state and the society may face helplessly phenomena associated with this, such as violence and crime.

Regarding Lebanese clans, hierarchically organized groups meet strong ethnic self-awareness and a strong family cohesion which is supported by a large number of young men ready to fight a modern society composed of small families and with liberal institutions that can hardly assert themselves when facing this challenge.

An employee of the LKA Berlin had already pointed out the problem in detail in 2002. The Berlin youth court Judge Kirsten Heisig accused the Lebanese clans of “unrestrained degradation of society”, while the Berlin chief public prosecutor Roman Reusch warned in connection with them of “civil war-like conditions” in the city. An anonymous crime investigator mentioned that this group considers Germans to be “a society to be looted, both as born victims and losers,” and the sociologist Ralph Ghadban sees their behavior as a “threat to social peace.” A confidential report of the Conference of Interior Ministers stated several years ago that any attempt of integration regarding this group had failed and that the dismantling of these criminal structures with a corresponding ethnic background would be possible in the best of cases “only in certain areas”. The chairman of the Police Federation in Berlin, Eberhard Schönberg, spoke in this regard about “the state’s complete loss of authority”.

The police often meet aggressive groups of men while patrolling the streets, men who are part of families in which ten children per woman is not a rarity, who are available in large numbers and can be quickly mobilized because of an unemployment rate of 90% and the culturally-conditioned tendency of men from these groups to remain in the streets all the time. The police must more and more frequently retreat and even traffic stops against members of these families can be made only with extra police presence.

According to the Commissioner for Integration of Neukölln, the male members of the Lebanese clans are generally prone to a special level of aggressiveness. The children in these families increasingly realize that no German can be in a position to set limits for them. The mere mention of their family name would be enough to force others to give them money and other goods. An admonition in the school or a mere criticism of a neighbor is seen as an attack against the collective honor of the community, to which one is ready to respond with violence. Individual members of a clan can always count on the support of many male relatives. For example, in March 2012, when the German Sven N. fatally injured a Lebanese in Neukölln in self-defense, he had to leave the district after receiving threats from the Lebanese clan. The attacker who died was, however, considered by many of his relatives as well as by Arabs and Turks in Berlin as a martyr and buried in a ceremony in which several thousand Muslims were present.

At their main centers in Berlin and Bremen, members of these clans appear as a group strongly prone to criminal activities. According to the central police department in Bremen, 1000 out of the approximately 2,600 Lebanese in Bremen (mostly men) are registered as suspects of having committed crimes. The statistical result is that almost every male Lebanese in Bremen was at least once a potential subject of a legal proceeding. In Berlin, the crime rate among Lebanese youth in cases of aggravated robbery is about 16 times higher than among ethnic Germans. The overall incarceration rate is 14 times higher than the average of the male population in the same age. Even amongst heavy offenders, Lebanese are strongly overrepresented. The former Berlin Attorney Roman Reusch spoke of “proper training for professional criminal activities” in some Lebanese clans. Police sources reported similar information. Male family members would often begin committing crimes as early as elementary school age. Imprisonment would be understood in their environment as a kind of an initiation rite.

Hostility to Germans is extremely blatant among many members of the Lebanese clans, who according to a report from the Süddeutsche Zeitung: “despise everything that is not part of their culture, first and foremost the Germans.” According to information from the media, an internal report made by the Berlin police described the situation of the Germans in places with strong Lebanese presence as follows:

News Feed FAIL

I have two computers, the old one and the new one. Truth be told, neither is really new — the old one is positively ancient, while the other is simply middle-aged.

Earlier tonight a fan gave out on the old one, forcing me to shut it down as fast as possible, before it could overheat. All the essential software is duplicated here on this machine, but the news feed database — all 300MB of it — is kept on the old machine, and only backed up here occasionally.

In other words, because the articles collected for tonight’s news feed are locked away in the shut-down machine (which I hope can be resurrected before too long), there will be no news feed tonight. I can start tomorrow’s feed from scratch on this computer, but for tonight we shall have to do without.

Merry Christmas, everyone!

The Canary Islands Are Full

The Canary Islands are an autonomous province of Spain, and also the westernmost outpost of the European Union. Like the rest of the EU, the islands are facing a crisis brought on by years of open-ended immigration.

Many thanks to our Spanish correspondent Hermes for his translation of this article from Alerta Digital:

Canary Islands: there is no room for more immigrants. The Canarian president warns that the Canarian economy cannot provide solutions for more people.

The Canarian president, Paulino Rivero, asked last Sunday for a “calm and scaremongering-free” debate to be held on the number of inhabitants in the archipelago, because in his opinion, the economy of the islands is unable to manage the population growth and reduce unemployment.

Paulino Rivero states in his blog that the figures speak “loud and clear” regarding the almost 180,000 foreigners who arrived in the last 10 years, and the 23,000 newcomers registered in 2011 due to migratory flows.

The population in the Canary islands has grown by 388,178 in almost 10 years, and the reality confirmed by the statistics “must force us to calmly reflect on the archipelago’s carrying capacity”, the president explains. He asks for carrying out an analysis on how many jobs the Canarian economy can create, and to detect the impact of this unstoppable population increase in the islands and in the delivery of public services.

“I think it’s rather evident that the Canary Islands cannot grow indefinitely and expand without end, a demographic growth which began in 1960,” Rivero reflects.

A Christmas Message From ESW

A soldier stands atop the Church of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart, in east Baghdad, as congregants attend Christmas mass [in 2011]. The church was struck by a suicide car bomb on July 12, 2009, that left four people dead and 21 wounded.

A Christmas Message
by Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff

About two weeks ago, a dedicated platform of solidarity for persecuted Christians worldwide tried to bring the plight of Christians worldwide to the attention of the busy holiday shoppers rushing through the streets of Vienna.

I say tried, because — as is the case every year this has taken place — the ignorance of the greatest persecution currently underway worldwide is drowned by the constant whining of members of the Muslim faith. One would even think that jackboots roam the streets of Vienna and Berlin, searching for Muslims, in order to deport them or worse. Nothing could be further from the truth: members of the Muslim faith are coddled, while it is the Christians (and the Jews, I might add) who fear for their lives, and rightly so.

Not only are the so-called hate crime statistics quite clear on the matter, but even a cursory glimpse at the daily headlines relates the obvious: the number of burned-down churches, of murdered Christians, of Christians driven into exile, is staggering. In comparison, mosques are in general not targeted, other than the lone slab of bacon here and there.

This is a tragedy of truly epic proportions. It is taking place not only in Islamic countries, but also in China and North Korea.

However, the greatest persecutions do happen in sharia-compliant countries. The rule “The more sharia, the less freedom (for other religions or none)” is strictly enforced. One need not look far in this case: Tunisia — which prior to the “Arab Spring” was quite a tolerant country with respect to non-Muslims — is now harassing atheists, while Islam’s blasphemy laws are choking the hard-fought for freedoms not only in Pakistan but around the world. Reading the monthly reports about Muslim persecution is reserved for those with stable mental health.

However, there is a light shining from above, almost literally. It is, after all, Christmas. And for this reason I will now talk about a very Christian matter: visions of Christ in the Muslim world.

Gates of Vienna News Feed 12/23/2012

Three churches were set on fire this morning at more or less the same time in the Austrian town of Amstetten, which has a population of 21,000. Police released a description of the suspected arsonist’s clothing and height, but neglected to mention his skin color. Amstetten has a large Muslim population.

In other news, South Korea erected a large Christmas tree-shaped tower with lights just inside its border with North Korea, raising fears that it will provoke a violent response from the North, which considers it “psychological warfare”.

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

Thanks to Andy Bostom, C. Cantoni, Fjordman, Insubria, JP, Salome, Steen, 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 Last Days of Europe

The following essay by Henryk Broder was published in Deutsche Mittelstands Nachrichten on December 16th. Many thanks to Hermes and JLH, who collaborated on the translation.

“The EU does not solve any problems, it is a problem.”

Henryk Broder: “We are witnessing the last days of Europe”

For writer Henryk Broder, the EU is the most massive attempt to de-democratize a society since the downfall of the Soviet Union. Therefore he sees no chance of survival — even if the passengers on the Titanic do not want to notice the iceberg the old continent is approaching. Deutsche Mittelstand Nachrichten documents Broder’s angry speech.

Dear Europeans,

An old Russian proverb says that: “There are no ugly brides, only insufficient vodka.” But this does not apply to the economy. The bad mood cannot be turned good with a feast, even if the firm’s party is held in a Hungarian brothel. What is lousy, remains lousy. Nor can one remain in peace and comfort singing “Merry Christmas!” when one knows that one’s neighbor’s home is in flames. Because one can guess that fire will spread to either one’s own home, or that one will have to feed and accommodate the homeless neighbors. It is hard to say which one of these scenarios is worse.

We are witnessing the last days of Europe. Not at the physical, but rather the philosophical and metaphorical level. Just as Karl Kraus foresaw it in his monumental work published in 1922 “The Last Days of Mankind”, so are we just witnessing “The Last Days of Europe”. No, they are not only here. They literally leap at us.

Last Monday, thanks to the ARD TV, I watched the live broadcast of the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony, the award being given to the European Union. I had just taken an overnight flight from Washington to Frankfurt and I still felt a little dizzy. But this kind of dizziness sharpens the senses. Although one sees everything a bit obscurely, one also hears the subtle nuances much clearer. I suppose that I’m the only one in this room who watched this celebration. Because it took place at a time when ordinary people are working and only single mothers, royalty and members of the Brussels bureaucracy can afford to sit in front of the television without having to decide how to pay the GEZ fees [fees of the “fee collection center of public-law broadcasting institutions in the Federal Republic of Germany”].

So, I followed the handing over of the Nobel Peace Prize to the EU and did not know whether to laugh or cry. Awarding it to the EU because they have kept the peace in Europe is as silly as awarding the Salvation Army because it has not engaged in dealing with alcohol, drugs, prostitutes and weapons. Or as honoring the International Red Cross on grounds that it does not engage in the running of concentration camps. Moreover, a peaceful Europe is not the guarantor of peace, but rather the result of a military intervention, without which today we would not sit together so comfortably, and if we did, then it would be probably only to celebrate the recent successful operation of the Condor Legion.

The awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to the EU reminded me of something that was stored deep in my memory. And because I was tired, it took a while until the memory had made its way to the surface. Yes, that was it! It was just in this way that the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union celebrated itself! They awarded each other medals and confirmed to themselves that they had made an extremely important contribution to peace and security in Europe and in the world.

Being myself a person who had spent the first years of his life in Poland, I have a slight allergy to the word “peace”. Not because I’m for the war, but because “peace” is the general alibi with which each and every barbarism can be justified. The Berlin Wall was also presented to us as an inevitable — today one would say: “without alternative” — peace-making and peace-keeping measure. And when I now look at the actions of the peace movement, which is passively watching the massacre in Syria, but does not hold back at protesting against the deployment of German soldiers in Afghanistan and against the deployment of Patriot missiles in Turkey, then I arrive at the conclusion that pacifism and cretinism are close relatives.

One day after the ceremony in Oslo, the capital of a country whose population has twice rejected joining the EU, I read an article in Die Welt about the Brussels “Vanity Fair”, in which disputes over who should speak at the ceremony and who should accept the prize lasted till the last moment. The President of the European Commission Durao Barroso, President Van Rompuy, and the President of the EU Parliament Schulz allegedly had, despite their busy schedule, argued like tinkers and tried to brush each other away. As usual in Brussels, a compromise was found in the last moment. Van Rompuy and Barroso together received the document, whereupon Van Rompuy was allowed to touch it first. He was also presumably allowed to take it home, take care of it and finally put it under his pillow. Martin Schulz had to be satisfied with being able to introduce his head through the neck chain holding the medal. But in the end there was a group photo which suggested unity and oneness — and this is another parallel to the morals in the CPSU Central Committee.

If you are looking for an explanation to this Vanity Fair of the alpha males of Brussels, I recommend that you visit their respective websites.