Rockets Fall on Haifa

El Jefe Maximo has an excellent analysis of what’s happening as Israel steps up its attacks in Lebanon and Hizbullah rockets fall in northern Israel, including Haifa

May need to revise that Katyusha range figure. Carl from Jerusalem reports that two Katyushas fired from somewhere in Lebanon hit Haifa this morning. Haifa is the largest city in northern Israel, and the country’s largest port, about 26 miles from the Lebanon border. I wonder if the rockets that landed in Haifa are the usual Katyushas, or if they are instead Iranian Fajr-5’s? The Fajr-5 has a range of about 45 miles, and is believed to be in the possession of Iran’s Hezbollah clients.

Hezbollah has just demonstrated an ability to hit major Israeli cities. Hezbollah is in Iran’s pocket — the specific pocket is that of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC — Sepah-e Pasdaran-e Enghelab-e Islami). I really do not think that Hezbollah would fire on Haifa without an okay from the IGRC command. Is this whole business Iran’s response to what is going on in the UN as to the Iranian nuclear program ?

When the Iranians have a nuclear warhead for the Hezbollah’s missiles, Mahmoud “Mad Jad” Ahmadinejad’s threats — and those of the mullahocracy generally — to destroy Israel will no longer be idle bluster. All the relevant players know this...

The chances of general Middle East War have, today, increased exponentially.

You’ll have to visit his post to get all the background links; I didn’t include them here.

El Jefe notes the reaction of the UN and the EU, acting as the megaphone for Arab grievances against Israel. Notice that the EU has condemned Israel’s “use of disproportionate force”. Also notice that only Israel (and maybe the United States) are ever accused of such a thing. Presumably, when the Russians leveled Grozny, it was not a “disproportionate” response.

Any response by Israel that has a chance of being effective in discouraging more murderous attacks by Hamas and Hizbullah will be condemned as “disproportionate”. The only proportionate response that the “international community” will allow Israel is to take the victims away in ambulances and hearses.

It’s heartening that John Bolton has condemned and vetoed the proposed Security Council resolution concerning Israeli actions in Gaza. Wretchard quotes from the text of Ambassador Bolton’s statement:

Notwithstanding these new developments [the Hizbullah attacks], there were many other reasons to reject this draft. The draft Resolution before the Council was unbalanced. It placed demands on one side in the Middle East conflict but not the other. This draft Resolution would have exacerbated tensions in the region and would have undermined our vision of two democratic states, Israel and Palestine, living side-by-side in peace and security.

Finally, someone is willing to say it: the Emperor is butt-nekkid.

We’ll Call It a Draw

Carl in Jerusalem is still the best place to get news on what’s happening in Israel. He’s liveblogging the unfolding stories on both fronts, with frequent updates. Just click the link and keep on scrolling.

A brief roundup: The IAF bombed the runways of the Beirut International Airport and put it out of service. The Israelis have blockaded the harbor, isolating Lebanon. The IAF is targeting infrastructure in Lebanon, and is reportedly concentrating on Hizbullah strongholds in south Beirut. Hizbullah has repeatedly fired rockets into northern Israeli towns, causing casualties, including several deaths.

Carl reports a theory about the person who masterminded the latest Hizbullah operation. You’ll have to go over to his site to see who it is.


As noted yesterday, the Hamas terrorist Muhammad Deif was badly injured in an Israeli airstrike in Gaza.

According to Carl, he lost some of his limbs (I haven’t been able to find anything on this in the MSM). But Hamas has denied that he was injured.

This all brings to mind the famous scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, in which King Arthur strikes off the limbs of the Black Knight one by one:

Arthur:		Look, you stupid bastard. You’ve got no arms left.
Black Knight:		Yes, I have.
Arthur:		Look!
Black Knight:		Just a flesh wound. [kick]
Arthur:		Look, stop that.
Black Knight:		Chicken! [kick] Chickennn!
Arthur:		Look, I’ll have your leg. [kick] Right! [whop]
		[Arthur chops the Black Knight’s right leg off]
Black Knight:		Right. I’ll do you for that!
Arthur:		You’ll what?
Black Knight:		Come here!
Arthur:		What are you going to do, bleed on me?
Black Knight:		I’m invincible!
Arthur:		You’re a looney.
Black Knight:		The Black Knight always triumphs! Have at you! Come on, then. [whop]
		[Arthur chops the Black Knight’s last leg off]
Black Knight:		Oh? All right, we’ll call it a draw.
Arthur:		Come, Patsy.
Black Knight:		Oh. Oh, I see. Running away, eh? You yellow bastards! Come back here and take what’s coming to you. I’ll bite your legs off!

’Tis but a scratch!

Get a Head of the Infidel With…

The Men of the North

For the tens of thousands of years of the Würm glaciation, Paleolithic hunting tribes lived at the southern edge of the ice fields in Europe and Asia. About 10,000 years ago, as the last of the glaciers receded, some groups chose to follow the retreating ice northwards. While their cousins in the warmer regions to the south were smelting metal, these hardy tribes were knapping flint. While the southerners were inventing agriculture, slavery, and the ziggurat, the northerners were hunting large game in the chilly grasslands and forests of Central Asia and Northern Europe.

One such group arose in the steppes of Central Asia, shifting to the Neolithic era by taming the horse and other livestock. These folk lived a nomadic existence, migrating in all directions during the last several millennia before the birth of Christ. For want of a better term, they are known as “Indo-Europeans”, in reference to the language group their descendents propagated throughout the western half of Eurasia.

Some of the migrants turned south, invading, conquering, and taking up the ways of the city-states in the Indus Valley, Anatolia, and the Mediterranean basin. Other branches moved westwards and northwards, both in Europe and in Asia, displacing the indigenes and even opening up ice-free territory to humans for the first time.

Two major waves of Indo-Europeans migrated into Western and Northern Europe. Celtic tribes swept through Central Europe to take up residence in what is now Germany, France, the Low Countries, and the British Isles. Later Germanic tribes pressed on after the Celts, supplanting them in many places, moving northwards into Scandinavia and pushing the ancestors of the Lapps and the Finns further up the Baltic and into the Arctic.

The Celtic and Germanic tribes were closely related; some ethnologists consider them to be two branches of the same group. Their cultures were similar; they traded with one another, fought with one another, and presumably intermarried. But all across northern Europe the Germanic tribes nevertheless pushed the Celts further and further west, until their last remaining outposts were the British Isles. The Romans assisted the Germanic conquests by hiring Frankish tribes as mercenaries against the Celts in Gaul.

After the fall of the Roman Empire, the now-ascendant Germanic tribes of the Low Countries, Jutland, and northern Germany saw their opportunity. During the 5th and 6th centuries A.D., wave after wave of tiny boats carried these various German tribes across the cold North Sea to Britain. They massacred or drove out the Romanized and Christian Celts, pushing them west and north, and stayed on to till the soil and raise livestock.

Three major groups descended on Britain. The Jutes, originating in Jutland and Holstein, settled in what is now Kent. Meanwhile, the Angles came from northern Germany, particularly Schleswig, and settled in Norfolk and Suffolk. The Saxons migrated from the region between the Elbe and Weser valleys in northwest Germany to occupy south-central England and what eventually became Wessex.

But, of course, this account simplifies a chaotic mélange of related tribes who mixed and feuded with one another as well as with their Celtic neighbors.

As the country was subdued, the settlers established Anglo-Saxon kingdoms in the region of Britain south of Hadrian’s Wall and east of Offa’s Dyke. The Christian Celts were driven into Wales and Ireland, while the pagan groups speaking more or less mutually intelligible Low German dialects occupied what is now England.

As the Anglo-Saxons were converted to Christianity, the kingdoms of England became less chaotic and violent. With stable farming communities, a literate clergy, and a system of inherited kingship, Britain adopted the general model of contemporary European Christian culture.

But to the north and east the Scandinavian tribes still seethed with pagan violence. As their numbers increased, there was little territory into which the surplus population could expand. The available arable or pastoral land was limited, and inland from the fjords were slopes of rocky scree, and then the glaciers.

So the tough and pugnacious younger sons took to the sea in their longboats, and the age of the Viking raiders began.

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When the monastery at Lindisfarne in northern England was sacked by the Vikings in 793, it was recorded by the Northumbrian chronicler Alcuin as an event of unspeakable brutality. Yet two and a half centuries earlier it was Alcuin’s ancestors, the heathen Saxons, who had slaughtered and raped their way through the Christian communities of Britain. The Vikings were scarcely different; they were just late to the game.

Over the next two or three centuries the relentless Vikings raided their way across Europe. From Greenland to Algiers, from Labrador to the Volga, the Vikings made their presence felt. From Sweden they crossed the Baltic and rowed up the rivers into Russia. They ported their boats across to the Don and the Dnepr and the Volga, and sailed to the Black Sea and the farthest reaches of southeastern Europe. Rounding Gibraltar, Vikings raided the Mediterranean coasts of Iberia, Italy, and Muslim North Africa. The Vikings even had the rare distinction of taking Arabs as slaves.

But, despite the conquest and slaughter, and unlike the Arabs (who were dedicated slave-traders), the Vikings did not generally take slaves during their raids. Perhaps the necessity of rapid movement by sea and the long passages through the cold northern waters discouraged the practice.

The Vikings were otherwise dedicated traders, establishing fortified mercantile settlements wherever they went. The Norse Vikings, after plundering the many rich monastic targets in Ireland and northwestern Scotland, established trading centers which became Dublin, Limerick, and other major Irish cities. In their wake they left their blond-haired genes to supplement the black hair of the Celts.

What made the Vikings different from the Anglo-Saxons was their failure to impose their culture on the people they conquered. They were content to rule and prosper, adopting the language and customs of the people they defeated. The different branches of Viking invaders — the Rus, the Normans, the Danes in England, the Norse in Scotland and Ireland — became, after two or three generations, indistinguishable from the folk they conquered.

When Danish Vikings invaded and occupied large sections of England, the result was to cement the unity of the Anglo-Saxons against them. The English accepted the Danelaw in northeastern England. They paid the Danegeld; however, over the next century the English gradually incorporated the Danes and merged with them.

Their two cultures and languages were similar; hundreds of Old English words were so close to Old Norse that Danish versions supplanted the English ones. When the heathen Vikings converted to Christianity, there remained little to distinguish them from the English. By the time the Danish king Canute became king of England in 1017, the Danelaw and England had become a single culture.

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In 1066, England was conquered by a different group of Northmen, from across the English channel in France.

These Normans were descendents of the Vikings who had raided and plundered in northern France. In the process of settling there, like Vikings all across Europe, they had forgotten their own language and culture and had taken on that of the people they conquered. Consequently, when the Normans abolished the Anglo-Saxon aristocracy in England and established their own legal system, they were importing a variant of ancestral Roman law.

Like other Mediterranean cultures, Rome had possessed political and legal structures whose lineage could be traced all the way back to the earliest city-states of Mesopotamia. For thousands of years the polities of the region had been centralized agricultural city-states, with rigid hierarchical structures and elaborately bureaucratized administration.

Conversion to Christianity did not change this ancient underlying worldview. Thus, God granted authority to the sovereign, who in turn dispensed justice and mercy to his subjects. Any rights the common people possessed were passed on to (or withheld from) them by the sovereign. This was the natural order of the world, and had been so for time out of mind.

I call this southern system of governance the “Pharaonic model”. It widely diverged from and was in conflict with the ways of the Normans’ English vassals. Their northern practice was represented by the yeomanry, the society of free-born petty landholders, who governed themselves by time-honored Anglo-Saxon custom.

This is not to say that the Anglo-Saxons had no hierarchy. However, it was a shallower and more fluid system than its Pharaonic counterpart. Anglo-Saxon governance was based on the prowess and virtue of those who were deemed noble, and instead of a Pharaoh there was a Cyning, a King, who represented his folk as their exemplar, rather than as their ruler.

A yeoman’s rights were granted directly to him by God and could not be revoked by his sovereign. The Normans, in order to rule their new lands successfully, were required to recognize the “ancient liberties” of their Anglo-Saxon subjects. When his rebellious barons compelled the Norman King John to sign the Magna Carta in 1215, they were simply retaking their ancient liberties. The customs of the men of the North thus survived despite the Normans and became the English Common Law.

Over the next four centuries the Common Law was elaborated into the English Constitution, with its Parliament and system of justice. This, then, was the political model that the English settlers carried in their minds when they debarked into the mosquito-ridden swamps of Virginia in 1607.

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English governance was transplanted successfully to North America, but the character of the new land was not solely English. The landless younger sons of the gentry, the fugitives and criminals, the religious refugees, and the political outcasts who initially came to America were drawn from the most adventurous and entrepreneurial of the Anglo-Saxon and Danish bloodlines.

These, in turn, were soon supplemented by massive numbers of Celts, first the Scots-Irish, driven by poverty and political maginalization. They pushed beyond the English settlers into the Appalachian highlands. After the Revolution, they in their turn were supplemented by waves of surplus Irish. Near where I live in Virginia, there was a large Welsh community, drawn here by geography: the ample deposits of slate created a demand for their well-known quarrying expertise.

With a tradition of fierce independence and a martial spirit, the Celts were scarcely governable except on their own terms. Combined with the yeoman small-holders from the English tradition, they formed the basis of what is now “redneck” culture, and were the backbone of the American military in all our wars.

And this was not only true in the United States — the Scots and the Irish outnumbered the English throughout the British Empire. Wherever the soldiers, sailors, and merchants of the British Isles went, the Celts were over-represented.

North America received further transfusions of northern European blood throughout the 18th and 19th centuries. The Dutch and the Germans were already well-represented in the original colonies. In the later 19th century Swedes and Norwegians spread across the northern plains of the United States and Canada, bringing with them an ability to withstand the harsh winters and an additional dose of the spirit of the North. The same folk who settled Greenland and Iceland came centuries later to homestead the frozen lake country of Minnesota and North Dakota.


This, then, is the complex American character, which is the largest facet of what is now known as the Anglosphere. But it is no more English than it is Irish or Scottish or Danish or Welsh. It is the character of the Men of the North, and is best represented by the Minutemen, the freeborn citizens who took up arms in 1776 to retake their ancient liberties.

What was originally a racial characteristic had long become a cultural one. It remains open to anyone who cares to accept the rules and join the game. After all, Thomas Sowell has shown that the descendents of African slaves adopted Southern redneck culture, and not just its positive aspects. Prior to the Multicultural Age the main attraction of our country was that anyone who came here, obeyed the law, and took the oath became an American.

The Pharaonic model was neither understood nor welcomed here. We are the descendents of those Paleolithic hunters, and when the Minutemen rose up in self-defense, they were, in effect, confronting another mastodon with their flint-tipped spears. They were a voluntary and self-organized group, taking collective action by common consent to serve a common purpose.

We are not so many generations removed from the Men of the North; their spirit can still be revived. The welfare state is only a recent graft onto the tree of Liberty. It is as ephemeral as was the Norman yoke on the shoulders of English yeomen.

The Men of the North faced lethal reality with nothing more than their courage, their wits, and a willingness to co-operate with one another. We will need to do the same again.

A new mastodon is looming in the glacial mist. We can only hope that the art of knapping flint is not completely forgotten.


This essay was inspired by a comment from Archonix on one of Dymphna’s posts:

Rather than Europe in general, America more resembles pre-Norman England and Scandinavia — especially… Denmark. Funny, that. The Nordic legal system rested first on the primacy of the individual’s rights and responsibilities and went from there. And even post-Norman England retained most of that individualism, despite the imposition of Frankish bureaucracy — i.e. the Domesday Book. Because those Normans, as you may know, were originally from somewhere around southern Sweden or Norway.

In trying to define Western Civilization, I have often asked the question, “Who are we?” This is part of the answer.

When we Americans look at Denmark — and the response of the Danes to the aggressive provocation of the Mohammed Cartoon Crisis — we are looking in a mirror. We would be well-advised to emulate our Viking cousins when our own turn comes.

Denmark matters.

Report From Israel

Carl in Jerusalem is live-blogging the situation in Israel as the IDF responds to the kidnapping of two Israel soldiers by Hizbullah from across the border in Lebanon. He has information from IDF sources:

Rumors flying that Ehud Olmert will be declaring war tonight (2 years too late)?

3 dead IDF soldiers in the north, 2 IDF soldiers kidnapped, triple pronged attack, Katyusha, terrorists on the ground shooting freely at IDF outpost, and then capturing 2 IDF soldiers.

Heavy fighting going on now. IAF knocked out bridges throughout southern Lebanon, IDF navy shelling Beirut suburbs,

In Gaza, Mohammed Deif, leader of Hamas, lost other leg and arm, not dead yet from last night’s IAF aerial bombing on a non empty building…

Shlomi Moshav in the north all children and parents are in the bomb shelters,

IDF tanks and troops have crossed into Lebanon where they left 6 years ago

IDF tanks and troops have cut Gaza strip in to two sections as IAF continues bombing

Censorship on other details now in effect by IDF

Fortunately, Hizbullah and Hamas would never co-ordinate with each other, right? The former is Shi’ite; the latter is Sunni, after all…

Oh, wait a minute. They just did.

Well, I guess pigs have flown. Hell has frozen over. It’s a cold day in July.


Late-breaking update: Both the kidnapped soldiers were Druze:

…DEBKAfile is also saying that the two kidnapped soldiers are both Druze. For those who were not aware, most Druze do army service here.

Dr. Seuss and Uncle Joe

My previous post about Dr. Seuss’ anti-appeasement cartoons from 1941 caused a lot of discussion in the comments about how much of a Red Dr. Seuss really was.

Last night, commenter Grayson said this:

…it wasn’t just that Geisel was pro-Stalinist-as-ally, he was largely pro-Stalin. Of course, that’s before the revelations about Ukraine and such got past Duranty and The New York Times gatekeepers.

DWPittelli followed up by asking an important question:

The cartoons were all from 1941, you say. Were any of them from before June 22, 1941, when Germany invaded Russia? If not — if they all followed that date — then they are evidence that Seuss was motivated by the Left, if not a leftist himself.

This morning the intrepid Wally Ballou located a selection of Dr. Seuss’ depictions of Uncle Joe himself:

Hmm — if you search the collection for images of Stalin, you can’t help but think Dr S was very highly disposed towards him. Most are of the “kindly Uncle Joe gives it to the nazi rats” variety, but check out the Feb 19, 1942 offering for out-and-out pro-Soviet feeling…

After all, Stalinst anti-semitism was no secret, but like many liberal Jews, Geisel was able to overlook it.

Here’s one of the depictions of Beloved Uncle Joe, from Dec. 24, 1941 (to see full size versions of this and the other cartoons, click on the image itself). Some of the others from the same period are equally creepy.

But answering DWPittelli’s question is important — was Dr. Seuss a Stalin fan before Barbarossa? If he was a party-line Red, he would have been opposed to any intervention before June 22, and then would have quickly switched sides.

Fortunately, the Mandeville Special Collections Library at the University of California at San Diego has a very well-designed set of overlapping indexes on the Dr. Seuss collection, including a chronological one.

Check out the whole collection, and it will become obvious that Theodor Seuss Geisel was no Stalinist. If you work your way through 1941, the evidence is clear: Dr. Seuss was in favor of intervention against the Axis long before Hitler turned on the USSR. The cartoon at right is from April 29, and his meaning is clear: America is foolish and blind not to deal with the Nazi danger.

All of the early 1941 cartoons have the same message, which was basically the FDR stance.

The most telling evidence that Dr. Seuss was no fan of Stalin is this cartoon, from June 20, just two days before Barbarossa. Stalin is shown as a crony of Hitler’s, one of the three dictator pals. The Stalin hagiography came later, when the USSR was our ally, and was standard practice in American popular culture for the duration of the war effort. Yes, Dr. Seuss seemed to go a bit over the top with his depictions of Stalin, but that was his modus operandi in all his cartoons.

He was, after all, following the FDR party line. In his later years, when he took up pacifism, anti-capitalism, and tree-hugging, he was doing the same thing: following the party line of the Democrats as they flushed themselves down history’s toilet.

Before the Lorax

It’s hard to believe, but Dr. Seuss wasn’t always a liberal extremist when he tackled political topics. Check out this cartoon from October 1941:

There’s a whole series of these anti-appeasement cartoons by Theodor Seuss Geisel in the Mandeville Special Collections Library at the University of California at San Diego. All of them are from 1941, and all are from before Pearl Harbor.

It reminds his fans (of which I am one) that Dr. Seuss had a long and varied career.

Tariq Ramadan in Sweden

Swedish reader LN has translated and summarized some material about Tariq Ramadan for Gates of Vienna.

“Sweden matters, too,” he says. “I think the following needs international publicity — please take it and use it.”

Last week all Swedish politicians of any weight, their supporters and partisans, lobbyists, and also ordinary people met up at Almedalen in the town of Visby on the Baltic island of Gotland. This has been a growing tradition since 1968, when the custom was introduced by the socialist Olof Palme (at that time Minister of Education) giving an improvised speech to a few believers from a lorry platform.

Last week was filled with speeches, discussions, meetings, concerts and musical performances (bread and circuses for the people), and other opinion-forming events. The complete Social Democratic Workers Party (SSP) was there, also representatives for the Workers Union (LO), the leaders of the non-Socialist Parties, the Prime Minister himself (a.k.a. HSB = he who decides), Göran Persson, the minister of finance Pär Nuder, etc. Others present: from the French parliament Ségolène Royal, a socialist; Helena Benouda, a convert, from the Swedish Muslim Council; and last, but not least, Tariq Ramadan, professor.

Tariq Ramadan visits Sweden quite often these days, and on this occasion he was invited by the Islamist-friendly Christian wing of the Social Democratic Party — aptly called Broderskapsrörelsen (the Brotherhood Movement) by their outstanding Mohammed-fan and organizer: “It is good that we have these contacts with the Muslim groups in Sweden — Ola Johansson” (“Det är bra att vi har de här kontakterna med de muslimska grupperna i Sverige — Ola”)

An intense election campaign is in progress — the Parliamentary election is in September — and the Socialists are anxious to solicit Muslim voters — up to 400,000 votes might be at stake.

Tariq Ramadan appeared on Wednesday the 5th of July, from 10:00am to noon in the Methodist Church, Adelsgatan, Visby. His talk was entitled:

To be a muslim in Europe — Is there a worthwhile place for Islam? (Att vara muslim i Europa — Kan islam få en meningsfull plats?)

Tariq Ramadan was introduced by Peter Weiderud (chairman for the Brotherhood Movement, former Secretary General of the Conference of European Churches) simply as a “scholar and professor” from London.

During the week in Almedalen a few collaborators of the liberal-conservative think tank ‘Timbro’ were reporting. One of these was present at the Tariq Ramadan speech and tried to pick up as much of it as possible; the results can be read here (or see below).

Is there anything the Swedish Social Democrats will not permit themselves to do in order to win votes?

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From Timbros Almedalsblogg:

Tariq Ramadan: It’s important for westerners to listen to the discourse within the mainstream Muslim community. Muslims aren’t the only ones who have to reevaluate their perceptions. There is a new Muslim presence, a new Muslim visibility. Third-, fourth- and fifth-generation Muslims are beginning to question who they are and what the future holds for them. We [Muslims] are far behind the realities of our societies. The European societies are changing and we have to take this into account.

400,000-500,000 Muslims live in Sweden and there are millions of us throughout Europe. We can either focus on the few bad apples or we can look at the vast majority, the mainstream. Arabs and Muslims have long contributed to European society and culture. It is therefore wrong to refer to Europe’s Judeo-Christian history. Tell me how you read your past and I’ll show you how you view your present. One of the biggest problems is ignorance. There is a deep identity crisis in Europe. We must define a new “We.”

Ignorance, suspicion and mistrust: People in Europe wrongly assume that Muslims are here to “Islamify” their new home countries. Muslims, on the other hand, tend to nurture a victim mentality. This creates a climate of mistrust. There must be a “revolution of trust,” and we must move away from an “evolution of fear.” Islam is complex… don’t oversimplify it. The anti-Muslim discourse traditionally reserved for far-right political parties is now being co-opted by Europe’s mainstream parties.

What does the religious integration mean? Muslims have been minorities for a very long time, not least in Africa. But it is new for Muslims to be minorities in secular societies. People are confusing social problems with religious problems. The riots in the French suburbs were not about religion, but rather social and economic injustice. The religious integration is, in fact, complete.

I am Swiss by nationality, Muslim by religion, Egyptian by memory, and internationalist by principle. People ask “who are you?” in order to define what they are not. They want to pigeonhole you. When one contributes to a society, one’s nationality is never questioned.

The majority of Muslims deplore extremism. Islam condones neither arranged marriage nor violence against women. People want Muslims to communicate values that dovetail with their own values. This makes them feel better about themselves… reaffirms their belief systems.

Some main points:

• The Muslim presence in Europe is a test…a positive test. Our presence forces you to ask questions about yourself.
  
• Every country has its assets and liabilities. Important to ask: What are our values? What is the gap between what you say and what you do? Are you practicing what you preach? One cannot compare one country to another. Sure you can compare Sweden to a dictatorship and feel like you’ve won…but it’s not a real contest. You need to compare Sweden to Sweden.
  
• We need to sow the seeds for the “revolution of trust” at the local level…we need to create trust at the local level. This will help to create the conditions for a new “We.” Let everyone come together, with Swedish common values as the foundation, to create a new identity. We much teach more inclusiveness in our schools.
  
• European silence is the cause of violence in suppressed societies, such as we are seeing in the Palestinian territories.

Questions and answers:

Peter Weiderud:		Are European societies afraid of religion?
Tariq Ramadan:		Yes, but people also misunderstand what secular means. Secularism is used a weapon against religion. We need to embrace pluralism. Secularism should create room for all faiths in society. We have to get back to the roots of secularism.
PW:		Is there a secular fundamentalism?
TR:		Yes, in France we are dealing with many secular fundamentalists. Two years ago the French government amended the law, making it incompatible with the Muslim presence. Many French people have a very narrow interpretation of secularism.
PW:		What is the situation for Muslims in Sweden?
Helena Benaouda:		Islamophobia is the gravest form of discrimination in Europe. The headscarf is a big issue in Sweden, of course. And it creates barriers, especially in the labor market.
PW:		How can we nurture the internal dialog in the Muslim community?
TR:		The Islamic creed and practices are the same wherever you go. The core values are identical. But there are different interpretations of Islam. And there is not merely the moderate and the radical. This perception is ignorant. There is a great expanse of interpretations under the banner of Islam. We need platforms where these various groups can come together and dialog.
Publik:		How will Turkey’s joining the EU affect Islam?
TR:		We have to agree on the parameters. Religion is not the question. We have to speak about laws and values. It boils down to principals, not religion. Islam is now perceived as a threat. The Turks are afraid that integrating with the EU will dilute their identity. They are living as Muslims and democrats. But Europe must respect their religion and traditions. Senegal is an Islamic country, for instance, yet it is also a democracy.
Publik:		You talk of mistrust and suspicion. What role do the Islamic countries in the Middle East play?
TR:		Everything happening in Islamic countries is not black and white. In the Palestinian case, for example, one can understand a situation without justifying it. The Americans revoked my visa and said that to understand is to justify. You can understand why the Palestinians do what they do, but I don’t justify it. Let’s understand the roots of extremism. The Muslim presence in Europe must condemn extremism, but also explain why it is there. I have to condemn hudud, for instance, because it is wrong. We can’t be silent; it’s a question of moral dignity.
Billy McCormac:		Can you compare Muslim integration in the United States and Europe? Has one succeeded better than the other?
TR:		There are some major differences to consider here. The Muslims who immigrate to the United States are primarily well-educated professionals, who by virtue of their background find it easier to assimilate into the American society. The Muslims who immigrate to Europe are of far more modest means. The acceptance of the American community has helped to remove tensions. At the same time, Muslims remain far removed from the corridors of power. A far more suitable comparison with European Muslims is the African American Muslims. Here you have people living in ghettos, on the margins of society. They have no voice, no power. Whereas many Middle Eastern Muslims have become seamlessly integrated into American society, the black Muslims languish on the sidelines of society, much like their brethren in Europe.
		— Written by Billy McCormac

Bibliography for this article:

Socialdemokraterna
Gotlands kommun
ICAPI
Frère Tariq : Discours, stratégie et méthode de Tariq Ramadan (Broché)
SVT
Högskolan.net
Workers’ Liberty: Tariq Ramadan is not our ally

“Let Them Eat Kebab” — The New Marie Antoinettes

The noted blogger Fjordman is filing this report via Gates of Vienna.


Admiral Horatio Nelson may have guided the British naval fleet to a famous victory at the Battle of Trafalgar, but he faced a far tougher foe during celebrations to mark its 200th anniversary. Organizers of a re-enactment of the sea battle in 2005 decided to bill it as between a “Red Fleet” and a “Blue Fleet”, rather than Britain and its French and Spanish adversaries, describing it as a re-enactment of “an early 19th century sea battle.”

Trafalgar, in which the British Royal Navy saw off a combined Franco-Spanish fleet off the southern coast of Spain, marked a crucial defeat for Napoleon’s sea power. Nelson himself fell during the battle. Apparently, we now live in the age of the Borderless Utopia and the Brotherhood of Man, and shouldn’t be too hung up on Spain, England, France or other irrelevant historical details. It’s just rude. Maybe soon, we will hear that WW1 or even WW2 was fought between the Yellow Team and the Blue Team. We wouldn’t want to insult anybody, would we?

The incident is part of a broader trend of re-writing history. Partly because of immigration, the British government appointed a commission on the future of multiethnic Britain. It concluded that “Britishness” had “systematic, largely unspoken, racial connotations.” The report said Britain should be formally “recognized as a multicultural society” whose history must be “revised, rethought, or jettisoned.”

In the European Parliament, the German Christian Democrat Hans-Gert Pöttering stated that school textbooks should be reviewed for intolerant depictions of Islam by experts overseen by the European Union and Islamic leaders. He said textbooks should be checked to ensure they promoted European values without propagating religious stereotypes or prejudice. He also suggested that the EU could co-operate with the 56-nation Organisation of the Islamic Conference to create a textbook review committee.

Timothy Garton Ash is considered a world-class expert on Europe’s future, and he refers frequently to his participation in glamorous-sounding international conferences. Bruce Bawer notes that Europe’s political élite has become extremely insulated from the people, and unwilling to address the problems that people are worried about. He thinks Garton Ash is typical of this élite. He distrusts national patriotism but adores the EU, writing about the need for a factitious European patriotism (“flags, symbols, a European anthem we can sing”) to encourage “emotional identification with European institutions.” Why does Europe need an EU? Garton Ash’s answer: “To prevent our falling back into the bad old ways of war and European barbarism.” Among his suggestions is that Europe encourage “the formation of an Arab Union.” He makes no mention of Arab democracy. Imagining “Europe in 2025 at its possible best,” he pictures it as a “partnership” with Arab countries and Russia that would extend “from Marrakesh, via Cairo, Jerusalem, Baghdad, and Tbilisi, all the way to Vladivostok.” But still, people claim that Eurabia is a conspiracy theory…

Mr. Carl I. Hagen of the right-wing Progress Party criticized the choice of a foreign citizen to head Norway’s immigration agency. “There should be no doubt about the loyalty to the native country and the connection with the Norwegian people, such as history and traditions, or the fact that you should look after this country’s interests. If you’re an immigrant from another country, with family and roots elsewhere, this could during conflicts raise questions about where your loyalty lies,” said Mr. Hagen.

Jonas Gahr Støre, Foreign Minister from the Labor Party, said Hagen’s statements were “bordering on racism.” Eva Joly, Norwegian born French magistrate, known in France for her tireless crusade against corruption, is now working as special adviser to the government in Norway. “To assume that nationality or citizenship have anything to do with being suitable [for a job] is a very old-fashioned way of thinking. We are no longer thinking in national terms, but in European or global terms. It is a duty to employ people from other countries,” said Joly. She has got both Norwegian and French citizenships, but considers herself European.

The director of Norway’s immigration agency, Manuela Ramin-Osmundsen, arrived in the country in the 1990s. Upon accepting the job as heading the country’s day-to-day handling of immigration, she vowed that it would become more open with those seeking residence permission in the country. As it turned out later, the agency (UDI) was in fact so “open” that it had been virtually running its own, private immigration policy. UDI violated both the law and political directives when it granted residency permits to nearly 200 Iraqi Kurds during the fall of 2005, even though not all their identities could be confirmed and some had criminal records. A commission that probed the controversial permits blasted the former head of UDI, and his successor, Ramin-Osmundsen, resigned.

Is it “xenophobia” if Norwegians, who make up less than a tenth of a percentage point of the world’s population, worry about being overwhelmed by immigration? As American writer Gore Vidal said in a lecture: “Liberal tradition requires that borders must always be open to those in search of safety or even the pursuit of happiness. But now with so many millions of people on the move, even the great-hearted are becoming edgy. Norway is large enough and empty enough to take in 40 to 50 million homeless Bengalis. If the Norwegians say that, all in all, they would rather not take them in, is this to be considered racism? I think not. It is simply self-preservation, the first law of species.”

Jonathan Friedman, an American living in Sweden, mentions that the so-called Integration Act of 1997 proclaimed that “Sweden is a Multicultural society.” Notes to the Act also stated that “Since a large group of people have their origins in another country, the Swedish population lacks a common history. The relationship to Sweden and the support given to the fundamental values of society thus carry greater significance for integration than a common historical origin.”

The Act thus implicitly states that the country of Sweden doesn’t have a history, only the various ethnic groups that live there. Native Swedes, who have shaped the country for centuries, have thus been reduced to just another ethnic group in Sweden, with no more claim to the country than the Kurds or the Somalis who arrived there last Thursday. The political authorities of the country have thus erased their own people’s history, without staging any public debate about this. I have read that Muslim immigrants in Sweden say that Sweden doesn’t have a common cultural or religious heritage; it’s just made up of different groups tied together by the use of a common language. It is thus “racist” to even talk about how “we” should integrate “them,” since there is no “we” to begin with.

Jens Orback, Democracy Minister in the Social Democratic Swedish government, is worried about “the public’s lack of faith in politicians.” Yet the same Orback said during a radio debate that: “We must be open and tolerant towards Islam and Muslims because when we become a minority, they will be so towards us.” It sounded almost too crazy even for Sweden that a minister could say something like this in public, so I checked with several independent sources, and apparently, he really did say this.

This is a government that knows perfectly well that their people will become a minority in their own country, and yet, is doing nothing to stop this. On the contrary, they are actively working to achieve this result. Has this ever happened before in human history, that the leaders of a nation are working to erase their own people and their history, and present this as an act of tolerance? No wonder some Swedes say that there is a war against Swedes going on: A physical war waged by Muslim immigrants, and a cultural and legal war waged by their own political élites.

Following threats from Muslim hardliners, some of the largest companies in England were afraid to display the English national flag during the football World Cup. In Sweden, a man was attacked and nearly killed for the crime of wearing clothes with his own national flag while Sweden was participating in the World Cup. Sweden, of course, has the same Christian cross in its flag as does England, and apparently, some “Multicultural youths” found this to be an intolerable provocation. The 24-year-old man was run down by a car in the city of Malmö. According to the police, he was wearing some clothes with Swedish national symbols on them, and this “provoked some emotions.”

Malmö, Sweden’s third largest city, is set to become the first major Scandinavian city with a Muslim majority. The wave of robberies the city has witnessed is part of a “war against Swedes.” This is the explanation given by young robbers with immigrant backgrounds on why they are only robbing native Swedes. “When we are in the city and robbing, we are waging a war, waging a war against the Swedes.” “Power for me means that Swedes shall look at me, lie down on the ground and kiss my feet.”

In Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, a Mr. Hans Hauge wrote an essay about Multiculturalism. “We are being told every day that Denmark has become a Multicultural society. This is a fact, it is said, and there is nothing we can do about it.” “It is not a question of something that the population has decided politically, it just happened. It is a bit like the industrialization or the modernization. It happens while we are asleep.” “We have to get used to it.” “Nobody could predict when the [Berlin] Wall fell. Nobody could predict the Muhammad [cartoons] crisis.”

According to Hauge, one thing we do know from history “is that it always moves from “multi” to “mono.” A Multicultural society is a sign of the last days before a new “mono” sets in. Multi is always a sign of destruction.” “We can thus be sure of the fact that we are moving from a multi-religious to a mono-religious society. The movement is always from many to one, but we don’t know which one.”

I agree with Mr. Hauge on the second part. A Multicultural society is only temporary. Sooner or later, we will return to a new mono-cultural society. This will happen either through the division of the previously coherent territory into new, mono-cultural enclaves or through the takeover by society as a whole of the most forceful and aggressive of these competing cultures.

The Multicultural ideology is malignant because it fragments society into separate, cultural ghettos, a kind of apartheid. We’re living in an age dominated on one hand by cultural relativism in the West, and on the other hand by aggressive Islamic intolerance, No Truths vs. One Truth. Is this just a coincidence, or is it possible that the vacuum of nihilism and moral indifference is provoking an aggressive counter-reaction? If so, Multiculturalism promotes totalitarianism rather than tolerance.

Of course, it is possible that Multiculturalism never was about tolerance to begin with. For some, it was about vanity. “Mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s most open-minded of them all?” It’s a beauty contest for bored, Western intellectuals who use immigrants as a mirror to reflect their own inflated egos, a sport where they can nurse their vanity in the mistaken belief that denigrating your own cultural heritage is a sign of goodness and lack of prejudice.

However, there are others who understand perfectly well that Multiculturalism is only temporary, and use it as a means to further their own ideological ends. They use Multiculturalism and massive immigration as a battering ram to smash the Old Order of Judeo-Christian nation states to pave way for a New Order, be that a pan-European super-state or the global dictatorship of the proletariat. Creative destruction, in other words. And this is where I strongly disagree with Mr. Hauge, who thinks Multiculturalism “just happened,” an accident of nature. I don’t know; much of it sounds pretty man-made to me.

It is true that the traditional system of nation-states will be challenged in the 21st century. Part of the challenge is indeed posed by impersonal forces of technological globalization. However, Multiculturalism is probably more a deliberate result of ideology than an accidental result of technology. The settlement slash invasion by millions of Muslims in major European cities was a direct result of secret behind-the-scenes agreements made by EU authorities, as documented in Bat Ye’or’s work on Eurabia, and it was widely cheered by Leftist intellectuals.

The Internet makes borderless communication easier, yes, but that’s not the major problem. The major problem is that millions of people are moving physically across the borders due to an intentional government policy of erasing the borders of Western nations.

If massive immigration is the inevitable result of technological globalization, how come Japan hasn’t been overrun by millions of Muslims the way Western Europe has, or how come a country such as Finland has received a lot fewer immigrants than neighboring Sweden? Why is Multiculturalism “inevitable” in Sweden or Britain but perfectly avoidable in Japan? Could it be that it has been decided by certain powerful groups, and that this Project is hidden from public discussion by saying that it is “inevitable” and that all those who oppose it are “racists,” anyway?

The political élites are involved in a Project — for it is a deliberate, organized project — to dissolve the nation states of the West. It is a coalition of several groups: Leftists, who hate the capitalist, Christian West in general and are influenced by Marxist ideas about the nation state being an obstacle to international liberation. However, there are also centrist and even so-called conservative groups participating in this. Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, the author of the awful EU Constitution, is considered a conservative politician, who however has an enormous contempt for the intelligence of ordinary people and never cares to hide this fact.

There is another group, whose members are convinced that the nation state is the cause only of wars and trouble. I suspect former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl belongs to this group. And finally, we have perhaps the largest group: Opportunists who just mind their own business and follow the lead of the other groups. They have good jobs on an international basis and no longer feel any close attachment to the nation states they are supposed to represent.


I call them The New Marie Antoinettes. The old Marie Antoinette, 18th century Queen of France, was famous for the quote “If the people have no bread, then let them eat cake,” although some claim she never actually said this The New Marie Antoinettes would probably have said “Let them eat kebab.” They think cries for national sovereignty is an old superstition among common people, and are actively dismantling the nation states of Europe through massive immigration, Multiculturalism and supranational institutions, primarily the EU.

They never asked for permission to do this, and have never even mentioned this Project in public. The creation of this new entity, Eurabia, is the greatest act of treason in the last two thousand years of Western history, and has almost brought Europe to its knees. Western political élites seem to think that we now live in the “global” age, and that any sense of attachment to your nation state or even your civilization is silly and “old-fashioned.” This is now creating an unprecedented gap of trust between the people and their leaders, which in Europe in particular is now so large that it could soon threaten the foundations of our democratic society. Can our countries survive when the people who are supposed to protect and serve them no longer believe in the very institutions they are supposed to represent?

One blogger suggested naming this Project The Great Deconstruction, a name I like. Earlier generations lived in the Age of Reason, we live in the Age of Deconstruction, where our Universities and institutions are more interested in deconstructing and breaking down all of our cultural heritage than in defending it and passing it on to our children.

It is noteworthy that Marie Antoinette, more than 200 years after she was guillotined at the height of the French Revolution in 1793, has become a national obsession, the subject of books, magazine articles, films, even chocolates and perfumes. “I love my country but we’re in a terrible mess,” said Claude Dufresne, a historian, referring to the rioting in the immigrant suburbs, the economic stagnation and the seeming inability of French politicians to offer solutions. “Under the circumstances, the past seems all the more glorious and brilliant.” The fascination with Marie Antoinette also reflected “nostalgia for what we have destroyed”, he added. In a similar vein, Evelyne Lever, author of a biography of Marie Antoinette, said the public related to her because of the extraordinary tragedy that she suffered: “She went from being almost a goddess in the palace to being dragged on to the scaffold.” At the same time, Marie Antoinette represents the end of an era, “and that is exactly what we are living through now, the death throes of a particular system”, said Lever, referring to suggestions that the institutions of France’s so-called Fifth Republic are exhausted and in need of renewal.

Roger Scruton, in a speech given in Belgium, noted that “buying and selling of citizenship, often to people who think of it purely as a right and never as a duty, is common throughout Europe. The political élite sees nothing wrong in people collecting passports as they might collect memberships of clubs.” “Members of our liberal élite may be immune to xenophobia, but there is an equal fault which they exhibit in abundance, which is the repudiation of, and aversion to, home.” This, attitude, which he calls oikophobia, is “the disposition, in any conflict, to side with ‘them’ against ‘us’, and the felt need to denigrate the customs, culture and institutions that are identifiably ‘ours’.”

The person who suffers from this state of mind repudiates national loyalties and “defines his goals and ideals against the nation, promoting transnational institutions over national governments, accepting and endorsing laws that are imposed from on high by the EU or the UN, and defining his political vision in terms of cosmopolitan values that have been purified of all reference to the particular attachments of a real historical community. The oikophobe is, in his own eyes, a defender of enlightened universalism against local chauvinism. And it is the rise of oikophobia that has led to the growing crisis of legitimacy in the nation states of Europe.”

“The ordinary people of Europe are now deeply anxious about their future. And when people are in a state of anxiety they pose a threat, both to themselves and to those whom they fear.” “If the liberal élite will not discuss the matter, and continue to put all blame for the growing anxiety on the xenophobia of the indigenous population while ignoring the oikophobia which is an equal contributory cause, then the likely long-term effect will be a popular explosion, and one from which no-one will benefit, least of all the immigrant communities.”

Serge Trifkovic, author of Defeating Jihad: How the War on Terrorism Can Be Won — in Spite of Ourselves, puts it this way: “At the root of the domestic malaise is the notion that countries do not belong to the people who have inhabited them for generations, but to whoever happens to be within their boundaries at any given moment — regardless of his culture, attitude, or intentions.” “A further evil fallacy is the dictum that we should not feel a special bond for any particular country, nation, race, or culture, but transfer our preferences on the whole world, “the Humanity,” equally.” “Those Americans and Europeans who love their lands more than any others, and who put their families and their neighborhoods before all others, are normal people. Those who tell them that their attachments should be global and that their lands and neighborhoods belong to the whole world are sick and evil.” “The refusal of the elite class to protect Western nations from Islamic terrorism is the biggest betrayal in history.”

I have noted before that the European Union is a throwback of to the pre-democratic era, the creation of a new aristocracy. It looks like this new aristocracy has the same grip on reality as Marie Antoinette and the pre-revolutionary French élites. Never mind the gang rapes, the embassy burning or the suicide bombings. Think of all the good things Muslim immigration is bringing us, the culture, the food. If the people don’t like sharia, let them eat kebab.

It’s easy to crack jokes about this, but the situation is in fact quite serious. Europe is being overrun by barbarians, and Europe’s political élites are spending all their efforts implementing a Frankenstein’s monster Constitution in the face of popular resistance. I smell a pre-revolutionary era that’s about to end. Let’s hope we can avoid Robespierre and the Reign of Terror this time.

Now, we have the blogosphere, the virtual guillotine. We don’t chop the heads off stupid people, we just chop the heads off stupid people’s ideas. Maybe the world is making progress after all.

The problem is that if, or rather when, we get civil wars in Western Europe due to Muslim immigration, the front lines will not necessarily be between Muslims vs. Infidels or even Natives vs. Immigrants. There is a cultural and ideological civil war going on in the West that, combined with some Islamic fanaticism, could lead to physical civil wars. The battle is between those who believe in traditional Western values and nation states and those who believe in Multiculturalism, the UN, international law etc. The last group, which is especially dominant on the Left but which has penetrated deep into the Right, thinks that national sovereignty is at best redundant, at worst evil and “racist.” Many of them will genuinely believe that those who reject Muslim immigration are evil, racist bigots, and some of them may side with Muslims to fight for their own ideological project. There is no call for unity against the Islamic threat because our leaders no longer believe in childish notions such as “civilizations” or “nations.”

Global warming is man-made and must be fought at all costs. Multiculturalism, however, and the settlement of millions of Muslims in our largest cities “just happened,” a bit like a hurricane. Still, the fact that the very same people who have eagerly championed Multiculturalism are now distancing themselves from the Project and claim that “it just happened” is an indication that they know the experiment has failed and is about to collapse.

So far, our liberal élites have been more effective in breaking down the Old Order than in making a New Order. Their “creative destruction” could turn out to be much more destructive than creative. Instead of a new pan-European identity we will see a temporary return to some very old tribalism. I hope I’m wrong, but I fear that I’m not.

The Danish Foreign Minister’s Uncommon Common Sense

The indefatigable Zonka has translated another Danish newspaper article. His comments are in italics, followed by the text of the article.

Below is a translation from today’s edition of Jyllands-Posten. A few background notes — Per Stig Møller, the conservative foreign minister, has traditionally been in the multi-cultural camp, which has put him at odds with the national-liberals (the faction the Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen, belongs to) at times, and he has been overruled on several occasions by the PM. As such he is showing progress in coming out with this analysis of the situation; however, his suggested solution — dialogue, dialogue, dialogue — is the same old song, that has been tried for so long without success, since no dialogue has yet come up with anything but concessions to Islam!

Danish Foreign Minister warns against Fanatic Islamism

By Kim Hundevadt, Jyllands-Posten, July 8, 2006

Per Stig Møller

The fanatic Islamists are just as totalitarian in their way of thinking as the Communists and the Nazis, the foreign minister believes.

Fanatic Islamism is a totalitarian movement, which should be taken dead serious, warns the Danish foreign minister, Per Stig Møller (Conservative):

“I have noted, that some are saying that it only a minority of extremists, who don’t have the same power that the Nazis and the Communists had in their time, however, that is taking the threat too lightly. Communism started with a few loons playing chess in Zürich, and the Nazis were a bunch of jerks in the beer halls of Munich. One must never underestimate a totalitarian movement in the making,” says the foreign minister.

He sees several similarities among the three totalitarian ideologies:

“Islamism wants to create an orthodox society based on the Qu’ran, corresponding to the communist ideology of a classless society and the dictatorship of the proletariat, and the Nazi ideology or an Aryan society based on biology.”

Banning Art

“The fanatic Islamists are just as totalitarian in their way of thinking. Which can be seen in Afghanistan during the Taliban and other places where they are in power. Then everybody is forced to live in unification and books, movies and music is banned,” says Per Stig Møller.

He adds that the totalitarian forces in the Islamic world also were a major reason for the escalation of the Mohammed crisis in January and February.

“The fanatics have tested how far they could push us. Naturally they will cynically use all issues they can find to inflame their populations. But it is important to emphasize that they are a minority. The best thing we can do is to support the forces of reformation. The Mohammed Cartoon case has demonstrated that they are as strong as we could have wanted, but surveys show that there is a majority for reforms in the muslim world,” says the Danish foreign minister and emphasizes that we need to be on speaking terms with as many interested parties as possible — including the moderate Islamists:

“The limit is drawn at those who wants to change our society with violent means. Everything else is dialogue,” says Per Stig Møller.

A look at history ought to give us extra motivation to seek a peaceful co-existence with the Islamic world. It has historically always been the culture, which had the largest population growth that expanded and right now the European populations are receding, he states.

But peaceful co-existence doesn’t mean that we should limit the freedom of speech to avoid offending religious feelings.

“Europe’s spiritual development is built upon freedom of speech. Just because somebody believes that the freedom is being misused to criticize and make fun of their religion doesn’t mean we should change that,” states the Danish foreign minister.

Sister Mary Benignus Has Zarqawi Now

Several days ago the Baron posted an amusingly-captioned photo sent to him by an old and dear friend.


The post was linked at The Brussels Journal — the first of the best European online magazines. Here was my response, left in the comments section (as you can see, I have contemplated Zarqawi’s afterlife):

Even as I write, somewhere beyond this universe, Z. is having to write on the blackboard a billion times:

“I will not behead infidels. I will love my brother.”

As he writes, ceaselessly, Sister Benignus is correcting papers at her desk while she waits for him to finish.

The late afternoon sunshine slants through the windows uncomfortably warm on Zarqawi’s back, since his time is to be spent in late summer, when all the other students are out of school for the holidays.

He is on #200,352 and he despairs of ever finishing. The blackboard stretches beyond his horizon. Z’s shirt is covered with chalk, as are his hands and hair. He would give his soul for a falafel sandwich, but unfortunately, he remembers he already sold that particular article years ago for a mess of jihad pottage.

In eons beyond measure, his soul will melt from this exercise and it is then that he will be permitted to beg forgiveness of his victims.

Funny thing is, by the time he is done with his purgatorial task, he will really, really mean his words of contrition.

The mills of God grind slowly… and Sister Benignus is one of His millers.

So just in case you wondered, Sister Benignus has Zarqawi now. It is a much worse fate than whatever it is you might have imagined for him.

Even Lucifer steers clear of Sister Benignus.

— Dymphna

Nosemite Sam

I’m grateful to Florida Cracker for this one. The only credit Donnah gives for it is to “Litigation Leery” (no link). Whoever Mr. Leery is, I’d like to shake his hand.

Consarn it! Ah’m a-gonna take care o’ all them pesky apes and pigs!

Follow-up: Another Euro-Myth Bites the Dust

In a recent post we discussed the relative safety of living in gun-toting America vs. dwelling in the ancient cities of Europe. The consensus was that while crime in the U.S. was lower, murder rates were higher. All those guns, you know.

Well, just to liven things up a bit, Paul Belien sent an email to disabuse us of that notion: the EU is beginning to pass the US in the murder and mayhem department. From Living Dangerously in Brussels, the following statistics:

Murder and manslaughter in the U.S.: 16,137 cases in 2004 (5.5 per 100,000 inhabitants).

Percent change compared to 2003: -2.4

Murder and manslaughter (moord en doodslag) in Belgium: 959 cases in 2004 (9.1 per 100,000 inhabitants).

Percent change compared to 2003: +11.12


Do yourself a favor and read his essay, Europe Must Find its Roots in America:

…History never repeats itself, and yet similarities are often so striking that in a way there is nothing new under the sun. In the 17th and 18th centuries North America was colonised by freedom loving people who brought the political institutions and traditions from Europe to a new continent across the sea. Many of them had left Europe because they wanted the freedom to live according to their own conscience instead of the conscience of the centralist absolutist rulers of the new age that was sweeping across Europe from the 16th century onwards. Their traditions were rooted in the decentralised traditions of the late Middle Ages and the Aristotelian philosophy of Saint Thomas Aquinas. Europe’s Middle Ages had been characterised by an absence of central power, while man was bound to multiple legal systems: the legal order of his city, that of the land, that of his guild, that of the church. There was not one monopolistic ruler, as in China or in the Muslim world, but many, which guaranteed greater freedom for the individual. The philosophy of Aquinas, moreover, was centered on the individual. God had called man to be free from sin, but in order to be free from sin he had to be virtuous, and in order for virtue to have any value it had to be voluntary, implying that the virtuous man had to be free in every aspect of his life including, as Aquinas’ followers later pointed out, his economic activities.

Hence the paradox came about that the civil society developing in the new continent was in a sense older than the new Modern Age of the absolutist monarchs governing Europe. When the Americans rebelled in 1776 they rebelled against absolutism in order to keep their old freedoms. Theirs was a conservative revolution. Europe had its own series of revolutions from 1789 onwards, but these were revolutions of a different sort. They toppled the ruling absolutists to replace them by absolutists of an even extremer form: totalitarians. These were not satisfied with controlling their subjects’ political and economic lives but also wished to control their minds and souls, i.e. to become their god.

[…]

American society is a society whose culture and view of mankind resembles that of the old mediaeval Europe from which it organically evolved. It puts man before the state because it accepts that man should come to God as a free being. Europe, having lived through the perversions of the Modern Age, has absorbed much of the absolutist and totalitarian spirit….

Read the whole thing, especially the beginning, where Mr. Belien points out how Ireland saved civilization during the Dark Ages. Ahem. His points about Americans’ understanding of economic functions read as though they were from one of Starling David Hunter‘s classroom lectures.

Saudi Slave Owner in the Slammer

Remember the Saudi slave owner in Colorado?

The mills of God grind slowly, but grind away they do: Homaidan al-Turki was convicted last week —

• Twelve felony counts of unlawful sexual contact with use of force
  
• One felony count of criminal extortion
  
• One felony count of theft (this is probably the $64,000 in back wages he owed his “maid”)

In addition, there were two misdemeanor convictions, both related to “false imprisonment”.

After the jury statement was read there was great drama in the courtroom supplied by the family and members of the Colorado Muslim Council. One man was ejected from the courtroom, and one of al-Turki’s daughters was carried out, crying, “What did he do?” It is hard to comprehend that she doesn’t know what Dad did to their slave who lived in the basement for four years, at least in this country.

Al-Turki, a Saudi citizen, owns a Colorado bookstore whose website still appears to be up and running. If you want to order an Islamic diatribe, here’s the email address: info@al-basheer.com. The snail-mail address is:

      Al-Basheer Publications & Translations
      3700 Havana Street, Unit # 102
      Denver, CO 80239
      U.S.A.

Let’s not forget that this man didn’t break any Shari’ah law. Rape of your Muslim slave is permissible under Islam. The young Indonesian woman, a seventeen year old virgin before al-Turki got hold of her, could be raped and enslaved with impunity. Now, rape of an infidel woman is another matter, so it’s probably no coincidence that the family’s choice of slave was a follower of the Prophet. I wonder if she was permitted a Koran in her basement hole? After all, her owner had a bookstore which sold them by the bushel. Maybe he gave her a slave an employee discount…?

Fortunately for this woman, Shari’ah law has no jurisdiction in Arapahoe County, and the fiqh does not apply in Colorado. Thus the Labor Department, in its lawsuit against al-Turki, requires him to pay $64,000 in back wages. Perhaps there will, in addition, be a civil suit for damages and deprivation of her civil liberties. Calling the ACLU, calling the ACLU: a tailor-made case here, just waiting for you. Much more apropos than eradicating little tiny crosses from municipal seals, wouldn’t you say? Unfortunately, the American Civil Liberties Union seems to have become habituated to easy pickings; they know small city governments will cave rather than bankrupt their taxpayers in a legal battle.

Al-Turki, on the other hand, has the full financial backing of the Saudi government. They went his bail, to the tune of $400,000, and the lesser bail for his wife, Sarah Khonaizan, who plea-bargained for a lesser fate. She’ll be sentenced in July, and has agreed to return to Saudi Arabia after her sentence has been served next year.

Al-Turki is not free on bond anymore. Having been convicted, his sentencing will take place in August. His defense argued that he should be allowed out on bond until then. The prosecutors asked that he be remanded without bond. He is not a citizen, and has immigration issues.

[Judge] Hannen ruled that since Al-Turki was convicted of counts that had aggravating factors that would put them into the category of violent crimes, the statutes did not allow him to continue bond, and Al-Turki was to be kept in custody until his sentencing Aug. 31.

So far, the convictions are locally based. In October al-Turki faces yet another trial — this one in federal court — on charges of forced labor, document servitude (he kept her passport from her, and it eventually expired), and harboring an illegal immigrant. The last charge is especially ironic, since it was al-Turki himself who created her status as an illegal alien by not permitting her to renew her visa.

This man is one of those infamous Saudi “students”, a 36 year old student studying linguistics in Colorado. He is also a member in good standing of the Colorado Muslim Council, where he spoke while out on bond awaiting trial. The Council may have links to the Islamic Assembly of North America (IANA).

Here’s some background — a bit dated, but then Jihad is eternal, isn’t it? — on their mission as described by Idaho prosecutors investigating fraudulent charities:

According to court papers filed by Idaho prosecutors, the IANA’s mission included the “dissemination of radical Islamic ideology, the purpose of which was indoctrination, recruitment of members, and the instigation of acts of violence and terrorism.”

In 2003, the National Review concluded

that elements within the Saudi government knowingly support IANA as a jihadist recruitment center — but the recruitment is clandestine to most Americans, including law enforcement. For the most part, IANA has attempted to mask its vitriolic propaganda, publishing its most radical content solely in Arabic. IANA’s English products and publications are conspicuously absent of the harshest al Qaeda and terrorist propaganda. Only in Arabic, on IANA’s several websites, can an individual read about the glory of suicide missions or navigate to audio clips religiously justifying terrorist attacks and calling for jihad.

One fatwa in particular appears to have given the justification to the hijackers to carry out the September 11 attacks. A government translation of a fatwa by a “radical Saudi sheikh” ominously published on one of IANA’s websites, Alasr.ws, in May 2001, stated, “[T]he mujahid must kill himself if he knows that this will lead to killing a great number of enemies…this can be accomplished with the modern means of bombing or bringing down an airplane on an important location that will cause the enemy great losses.”

My guess? Al-Turki has a long time to ponder his fate. Just for this first trial, he faces sentences that range from ninety-six years to twelve consecutive life terms. Those are golden bargaining chips for federal prosecutors looking for terrorist links.

It’s a long, long time from July to November
And jail gets old if you can’t remember…
But the walls disappear and you suddenly grow wings
When you somehow recall those Jihad rings.

*   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *
Who are you willing to name, Homaidany, just to get free?


Hat tip: Combs Spouts Off