An Open Letter to the Taliban

Last Sunday, the Taliban released an open letter to warning Canadians that unless they leave Afghanistan, they will experience more attacks like the recent one that killed two Canadian aid workers.

A reader in Canada tipped me to another open letter, this one written by a Canadian officer in response to the Taliban. It appeared on Thursday in The Ottawa Citizen:

George Petrolekas: A letter from Canada

In response to the Taliban’s recent threat-filled ‘letter to the Canadian people,’ a Canadian officer has a few choice words

An open letter to the Taliban:

You purport to speak for Afghans and Afghanistan yet your only questionable legitimacy comes from the barrel of a gun, the slaughter and intimidation of innocents supported by the profits of the opium crop that you protect. You do not answer for the night letters you send, the people you behead, or the villages you hold hostage whose only crime is that they do not agree with your views.

And yet you dare say that we come to kill your innocent, equally forgetting the deaths of thousands of innocents committed by your fellow travellers in crime; so conveniently forgetting the slaughters of Bali, Madrid, London and New York City. Your words may sound high and mighty, but your actions and deeds betray the truth of what you are: a movement committed to the enslavement and servitude of those whose voices cannot be heard. You revile America forgetting that it gave you more food, flour and wheat than any other nation while you were in power; what did you do for the Afghan people?

People you have fooled say that Afghanistan was more secure under your rule. But what is security under an institutionalized cabal that “legally” kills, amputates and disfigures those who do not agree with it?

You kill the defenceless, and those who come to give hope, simply because they are foreign, and you do so not as men, but hiding behind the disguise of women, or using women and children as shields, or using those who have lost the ability to think to carry out your crimes. And in doing so, you defile the very words of your God and his prophet. How can the prophet feel peace in the face of your cowardice? You have killed more Afghan men, women and children by your bombs and attacks than any other nations combined. While we may have killed innocents by accident, those deaths pale in comparison to the thousands you have killed by design. God may forgive us the loss of those souls; he will never forgive you.

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You condone the poppy, protect it, encourage it, tax it, and sell it. Yet the damage to your own countrymen is not of importance. A country that could once feed itself now cannot, and in the wake of the opium trail there are hundreds of thousands of new addicts in Afghanistan, and greater numbers in Pakistan, Iran, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and all the other republics that border you. Your selfish lust for power does not even respect those of your own religion.

You ignore the voice of the Afghan people as expressed in votes that your own intimidations could not suppress. The United Nations supervised those elections. They were more closely watched and safeguarded than almost any other elections in history; and people not only voted with their hands on a ballot, but with their feet in travelling miles for the first opportunity afforded them to at least have a voice in their affairs.

You speak of respect in the community of the world and the community of nations, yet it is you who ordained the destruction of the Buddhas of Bamiyan. These were not yours to destroy, they were the legacy of humanity and its existence on this planet, but as always, you turned a deaf ear and a blind eye to anything that does not ascribe to your views. You kill doctors, teachers and aid workers, making a mockery of the words “God the merciful and compassionate.” Your deeds make you the ultimate apostates, your actions are the ultimate heresy.

And even in the face of such cowardice, lies and betrayal of the Afghan people, the hand of peace has been extended to you time and again with the simple request that you denounce violence and intimidation. But no, that does not serve your needs, which are among the vilest ever seen on this planet: simply to ply a nation back into servitude.

And so, we are in Afghanistan to give voice and protection to those whose voices cannot be heard.

If Afghans truly wish us to leave, we will do so. We are not an occupying power. We have never attempted to impose our religious or political values on your nation. We accept Afghanistan as an Islamic republic. We accept that democracy will not and may never be like the way we practise it and that freedom of speech and religion will not be like ours. But we do assist that vast majority of Afghans who believe that a girl has a right to go to school, that a village, a district, a province and a nation should allow its people to have a voice in their own affairs.

And in the face of your threats, you will also find that we are made of sterner stuff as are the Afghan people who only wish to live lives in some semblance of security. Liberty does not come freely and ours has been a steep price to pay, and that gives us no joy, but we pay that price in the fervent belief that to not do so is to consign a nation and a people to a darker fate at your hands. And thus we will continue until you are no more.

If those Afghan voices tell us that we should leave, then we will. But we will never leave them alone to face the threats and killings that so brutally demonstrate what you are, because you do not and never have spoken for the Afghan people. And with God’s help, you never will.

George Petrolekas was involved in the Afghan mission from 2003 to 2007, representing Canada at NATO’s operational headquarters in Afghanistan.

Rough Justice

The following article from Norway is a reminder that Islam is not the only component of cultural enrichment. Our Norwegian correspondent The Observer, who translated the piece, has this to say about it:

Highly mobile organized foreign criminal gangs have roamed Norway for years stealing whatever they can get their hands on, and the incompetent Norwegian pencil-pushing police force pretty much just twiddle their thumbs and look the other way.

The chances that the police will show up in the event of someone being burglarised or physically attacked are pretty slim. I’m not exaggerating; it’s true. The police are, however, notorious for setting up speed traps and issuing heavy fines to law-abiding and taxpaying Norwegian motorists.

It’s therefore refreshing to see Norwegians fed up with this travesty take decisive action when they catch thieves red handed. Romanian and Bulgarian gypsies are infamous for their thieving ways and they have in the last few years cast their eyes on wealthy and naïve Norway. I guess this time they were taught a proper lesson. Hopefully more will be handed out in the future.

Also, pay attention to the stupid remark made by the police officer interviewed in this article: “He is surprised that someone whose car is damaged chooses not to contact the police.”

Well, duh! Why would anyone contact the police after being caught stealing? I’ll bet the van is probably stolen too, so it makes perfect sense for the thieving gypsy not to report this incident to the police.

But I suppose this type of reasoning is too complex for a pencil-pushing Norwegian police officer these days. It really tells you all you need to know about the Norwegian police.

The translated article from today’s VG Nett:

Claims Romanians stole aluminium — smashed their van

(VG Nett) The truck owner claims Romanians have stolen from him for months. Friday, he took both the law and the gearshift in his own hands. The truck owner from the Ålesund area, who prefers to remain anonymous, claims that his company has been plagued by thefts of diesel, car batteries and other valuable items for months.

“There isn’t a truck that they’ll leave alone. They steal everything. They have broken into my yard several nights in a row. Today they struck in the middle of the day,” he tells VG Nett.

“The cargo hold of the van was jam-packed with aluminium”

On Friday some of his employees caught two men in the company yard. When the two men were ordered to open the doors of the Romanian-registered van the employees discovered that it was full of goods belonging to the company, according to the truck owner.

“They came up with a thousand lies and pretended not to understand. The car was full of aluminium and other stolen goods. They were made to remove all the items from the van and to sort it. Before they were allowed off the site they had to watch their van being smashed,” he says.

How to Avoid Intellectual Hemophilia

For several centuries an anatomical peculiarity known as the “Habsburg lip” (or the “Habsburg chin”) occurred repeatedly among members of the royal families and aristocracies of Europe. It was a genetic abnormality of the lower jaw, and made normal chewing difficult for those who suffered from it.

The Habsburg lip resulted from generations of inbreeding throughout the royal families of European countries. Within this rarefied society, cousin marriage was the norm, and the accumulated genetic defects led to the frequent expression of recessive genes among the monarchs of Europe. As a result, physical abnormalities, insanity, and idiocy manifested themselves within the aristocratic breeding stock.

Another famous example was Queen Victoria of Great Britain, who, through her numerous progeny and their descendents, contributed hemophilia to the list of ailments bequeathed to Europe’s ruling families. Inbreeding was simply the order of the day; Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip are both great-great grandchildren of Queen Victoria.

The harmful effects of inbreeding reached their dubious climax in Charles II, the 17th-century Habsburg king of Spain. Not only did Charles have the Habsburg lip, but he was also mentally and physically disabled. More importantly for the politics of the day, he was unable to sire children. The Habsburg line in Spain ended with him, sparking the War of the Spanish Succession.

From a systems-analysis standpoint, the gene pool of the European monarchs was a small closed system, with no mechanism for correction should the information within the system become corrupted. In a modern computer system, the solution would be multiple-redundant offsite backups with a disaster recovery plan in place to cover emergencies in the event the system should be compromised.

Such an approach was not available to the collective royal DNA of Europe. The obvious solution was outbreeding, but that was simply unthinkable. Resorting to it might — horror of horrors! — contaminate the line with common blood. That was just what was needed, but the system did not allow for it. As a result it carried the self-limiting seeds of its own destruction.

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The analogy with inbreeding can be extended to include other types of human information systems. Cultures, polities, corporations, and any other collectives of homo sapiens can be damaged by the informational equivalent of inbreeding.

In constructing a system, the trick is to keep it open enough so that it retains flexibility and responsiveness, while retaining a rule-based structure to avoid any descent into chaos. In classical capitalism, the “invisible hand” of the marketplace serves to keep the system open and functioning at maximum efficiency, but only as long as the rules constrain it. The enforcement of contracts, protection from theft and extortion, guards against monopoly, etc., are necessary preconditions before the invisible hand can work its magic.

When it does, millions of people can make their own uncoerced self-interested decisions. Information flows rapidly and effectively through the system, and the power of the market is unleashed.

To find its economic opposite we have only to look at the Soviet Union, a system that was so closed and encumbered with destructive rules that it failed to survive even for a century.
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Obviously, political systems are subject to the same kind of rules. For a constitutional republic to be successful, it must be rule-based but open. It needs a well-constructed constitution, the rule of law, and a well-defined system for changing its laws in order to retain flexibility. The farther a democracy strays from these ideals, the more corrupt and sclerotic it becomes.

All human organizations have a tendency to become rigid and sclerotic with the passage of time. Those who benefit most from the system — the people at the top with all the perks, privileges, and power — understandably want to restrict the flow of information in order to preserve and extend their position.

The worst-case scenario occurs in those dictatorships which consolidate absolute power into the hands of a single person. Preserving his position requires the maximum leader to eliminate his potential rivals, who are also the people most likely to provide valuable information, new insights, and alternative political strategies. His inner circle is eventually reduced to yes-men and toadies who convey nothing to their boss that he doesn’t want to hear. The system becomes totally closed, and once corrupt information enters, it persists and becomes magnified, eventually bringing down the entire structure.

Stalin may be the most extreme example of this process. At the height of his rule, reliable information about the governance of the country not only never reached him, it simply didn’t exist. From the top to the bottom the Soviet Union was riddled with lies, false statistics, cover-ups, and deliberate inventions. This wasn’t a bug in the program; it was a feature — each person in the Bolshevik system had everything to lose and nothing to gain by passing on correct information to other parts of the system.

The Lysenko affair could only have occurred within a closed system as deranged and corrupted as the Soviet Union under Stalin.

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The best overview of the theory behind rule-based open systems can be found in The Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki. The author extends the concept of the invisible hand to all large groups in which numerous sources of information are available. Varied, conflicting, and contradictory opinions, when aggregated within a large group, arrive at a much closer approximation of the truth than any individual can manage.

An example can be found in the old fairground contest, in which participants pay a dollar to guess the number of marbles in a large glass jar, with the closest guesser winning a prize.

Someone might make a lucky guess and hit the exact number of marbles in the jar. Others will be close, and still others will be wildly off in their guessing. But studies have shown that the average of all the guesses is invariably accurate. The aggregation of many ordinary opinions gives a better answer than any provided by a single informed expert.

Despite the contempt in which educated people hold the great unwashed, the collective opinion of the masses is more likely to arrive at the truth than the most educated expert.

It’s a bitter pill for us know-it-alls to swallow.

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So what does all this have to with blogging the Counterjihad?

Well, it helps explain why we try to keep the discussion here at Gates of Vienna as open and fluid as possible. Our forum is definitely rule-based, in order to keep the system from descending into chaos, but within these constraints we want the information to flow freely. Some of our commenters chafe at our guidelines, but the rules help make sure the wisdom of the crowd is effective here.

Part of this is a personal predilection: I really do like to listen to various points of view before making up my mind. But it’s also a strategic consideration — if useful working ideas are to emerge from our efforts and be utilized, we need to open up the discussion to as many voices as possible.

In dealing with European issues I am at a disadvantage, since my knowledge is so limited. Therefore I try to let people from the countries involved speak for themselves as much as possible. If there are differences among, say, the Dutch, my response is to post as many examples as I can find of opinions within the Netherlands, and let the readers and commenters sort through the results to reach a conclusion.

To let exponents of opposing points of view air their opinions — provided they remain civil and temperate — is one of the main missions of Gates of Vienna. What has worked well so far has been to present the information without a lot of editorializing, and allow the audience decide what makes sense.

Then the distributed intelligence of the internet does its work, and the “best fit” line appears through the scattered data points. Through the wisdom of crowds the truth emerges, and we can all absorb it and move on to whatever the next step might be.

The major mistake of a tightly-controlled forum is to suppress the distributed intelligence of those who voluntarily take part. The arbiters of the forum arrogate all the intelligence unto themselves, which of necessity makes for a lower IQ than the wisdom of crowds.

By controlling content, they effectively cull the herd within their forum, selecting for genetic material that most closely matches their own. It’s no surprise when all that inbreeding results in intellectual hemophilia and idiocy.

Which brings me to one of the reasons I happily endure the slings and arrows and brickbats of Gringo Malo and Jesus Christ Supercop: as long as they’re around, I know I don’t inhabit an echo chamber.

Safe Harbor

Summer Fundraiser, The Wrap-Up

Ah, the last day of an unusual bleg. Yeah, I do indeed always say “this one was different” — that’s because they all have a particular rhythm and flow. While I was out of operation for some of those days, still… I don’t recall a week when we had our hands out — “Please, y’all. One more time” — whilst the terra was much less than its usual firma, and the oceans roiled in concert.

Messages from the Karma Dude? Hardly. Or, if those were intended as cosmic memos, they were certainly delivered sotto voce. Strange, though, that we were relatively near the epicenter — which was close by in Cuckoo according to the Google Map — yet Washington D.C., many miles further north in a reclaimed swamp and certainly not part of the Blue Ridge Piedmont where be this quakier geology — experienced more damage.

I suppose one has to label that extended tremble as an “earthquake” since it registered on the Richter Scale, and it knocked stones off the National Cathedral, and it continued to send out aftershocks as far as New England and Canada — to remind us how little we know of what teems and steams and pushes far below this seemingly hard ground upon which we move…

Earthquake Cuckoo left its particular imprint on those who experienced it because forever after we’ll associate that brief jitney ride with where we were and what we were doing as it began to make itself felt as a whole body experience. For me the remnant impression will be one of absence, for what it turned out not to be. Suddenly brought out of my snooze (that’s ‘meditation’ with your eyes closed) from the severe repeated jolts, I was utterly certain the Baron was lying next to me in the throes of an epileptic seizure. Thus my immediate reaction to the sight of an empty bed was profound relief. Bouncing though it was, that bed did not contain my husband’s unconscious body. This immediate reactive fear continued to abate as I leaned over to inspect the floor beside the bed; a space where, again, his body was not lying. A second later the Baron appeared at the door, hale and hearty. It was only then that reality hit, and it was only then that I became alarmed, even as my great relief continued to make itself felt, even through the disconcerting waves of involuntary movement.

We headed out the front door (ladies first), our cat frantically moving past the too-slow human legs toward the safety of the yard. We stood there in what now seem long suspended moments, listening to the contents of our home jingling to their earth music. In retrospect, our calm now seems surreal; how curious our interested curiosity appears from this distance. Perhaps if we lived in ‘real’ quake country our reaction would have been less one of interest than of fear and foreboding. For me, though, we were still too close to that waking instant when I thought my heretofore healthy husband was in the throes of his own brain quake.

I remember the silence too. After the tremors, everything seemed so very still. We returned hesitantly to the house, looking in each room to see what might have fallen. The next day we were to find a small vase under a chair in the living room. I think it fell off its perch on the bookshelf during one of the aftershocks, though. I remember looking under the chair almost immediately after our first re-entry.

And then there were the days leading up to Irene’s impending visit to the long coast of the eastern United States. The Baron followed it closely because he cares deeply about the fate of the Barrier Islands along the coast of North Carolina. Each severe hurricane changes the topography, those haunts of his childhood, of his young adulthood spent camping on the Outer Banks. Even Irene managed to cut a new channel or two on that slim spit of land.

I never quite believed in Irene, at least not for us. We’re not too far inland to be hit, or to lose our power, but she seemed a media hype from the beginning. Those media flunkies wanted this one so badly. It would be the great opportunity for our commander-in-chief to strut his anti-Bush stuff. No Katrina for him. In reality, Irene was the anti-Katrina. The LOL ’cane, I called it (as did someone else), but the media and the Dauphin played it for all straight, as though this were the Real Deal.

Sure it was. Dude had to come in out of the rain, quit playing golf so he could do his stint as The One who calms the seas and gentles the winds. Yes, he can. Indeed he can, if someone would just get the damn winds up to speed or let him go back to the golf course. But even if his golf game has to wait, what sacrifices is this gallant not willing to make for us all?

[Meanwhile, his illegal immigrant uncle was arrested in Massachusetts for drunk driving. Sorry, for suspicion of drunk driving. It would appear that Obama Onyango is to be represented by the same lawyer who handled Auntie Zeituni Onyango’s charges regarding her illegal alien status. Isn’t that nice? The Onyangos have a family retainer for all their asylum needs.

Meanwhile, Obama moves past Jimmah Carter for the number of embarrassing relatives attending a sitting president. I doubt Uncle Obama will be nearly so entertaining as Bubba Billy Carter or his momma, Miz Lillian.(The latter was heard to declare she might have made a mistake in having children after all) The Barack Obamas are taking no chances: Michelle’s momma is safely under wraps ensconced in the warm extended First Family at the White House. Ol’ Jimmah from the Ummah was just a Georgia cracker peanut farmer back then. What’s Obama’s excuse?]

So in the midst of the quick quake and the hurrycane, our bleg sailed on. As we continued, my own “flare” of fibromyalgia receded enough to allow me to sit up for extended periods. Now, like Irene, it’s mostly gone. Till the next one, but I’ll worry about that when it gets here. We never hit a reef, nor did we tack too close to the wind. (if you don’t count last night. A few worried people have written us to “watch our backs”, but we’re in this for the long haul.) There are only two known factors in play:

Contemporary Book-Burnings in Flanders

Our Flemish correspondent VH has compiled a report on the cone of silence that has been placed over Vlaams Belang in Belgium, in this particular case the increasingly blatant censorship of any writers who happen to be members of the Flemish separatist party.

First, this introductory note from VH:

Two books have recently been banned from the shelves of bookshops in Flanders. Not because of their content, certainly not because any of them calls for violence, or is discriminatory or racist. At least one of these books might have been a top bestseller by now, and the other one should definitely have been a top bestseller by now. The only thing these books have in common is that hey have been written by members of… Vlaams Belang!

In an open letter, Koen Dillen (Vlaams Belang) made a point that strikes at the heart of politically correct hypocrisy: “Self-declared Flemish intellectuals speak with full disgust of the book-burnings in National Socialist Germany, but in practice they prove themselves to be good students of that system. In the year 2009 the books of political opponents are not even burnt anymore; they are simply not published.”

Below are three articles that were published in response to the contemporary book-burnings.

1.		Benno Barnard (poet and writer): “A few words on behalf of Voltaire”
2.		Koen Dillen (politician and writer): “Censorship in Flanders” (open letter)
3.		“It rustles again under the counter…” (open letter by various opponents to these book-burnings, from various political streams)

Translation #1:

A few words on behalf of Voltaire

By Benno Barnard

Politically correct thinking weighs like lead on the nervous system of the Flemish intelligentsia, who should finally get themselves together right now, scrape their throats and expressly take a stand against the actual censorship that Koen Dillen and Filip Dewinter of the Vlaams Belang have to endure in the form of the refusal to sell their books.

Those who declare —while calling upon Voltaire— to defend freedom of the press with a drawn pen in their hands resemble a man who sets his own house on fire. And yet that is exactly what I will do here, however. Defend Dillen and Dewinter. I never would have dreamt that I would find this necessary.

To my knowledge, the only intellectual who at least defends one of the two is Johan Sanctorum. On the blog Visionary Belgium, the philosopher rushes to the aid of Koen Dillen, who under the pseudonym Vincent Gounod, published a biography of [the French Socialist President] François Mitterrand.

“It is a fateful sign on the wall in our democracy that pseudonyms appear again, not as “Spielerei” but out of bitter necessity. It points out that the media, socio-cultural and social dissemination of the cordon sanitaire, originally a party political entente with a strategic purpose, means a loss for the cultural climate in Flanders,” Sanctorum writes.

One of the literary critics who praised Dillen’s work to the sky (“A magnificent story that reads like a novel”) was Claude Blondeel of the radio program “Ramblas”, and probably rightly so, because according to the Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad [1], it is an excellent book. Blondeel now stays nicely silent, which he probably would have done anyway if he had known in advance that the son of the founder of the Vlaams Blok was the erudite author of the writing.

When the Gounod’s mask fell off, the bookseller Groene Waterman [2] in Antwerp responded by immediately taking the book from the shelves in a shocking act of Stalinism, which made me deeply disappointed with the bookstore where I have been a regular customer for many years. They do not refrain from selling extreme leftist writings, for the content of which I would not like to be responsible, such as those of the anti-Semite Lucas Cathérine. But that never hindered me from buying at the Groene Waterman, because I defend the right of Cathérine to proclaim lies — it is up to me to rebut them when they disturb me.

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This tolerance may, in the spirit of Karl Popper, not tolerate intolerance, however; in other words: writings that expressly incite to violence should be prohibited. (However, as far as I am concerned, in the case of historical texts, such as Mein Kampf, a scientifically-framed edition should be acceptable.)

It is clear that Dillen’s book does not call for violence. The fact that the author is a member of Vlaams Belang is also completely irrelevant. But I suppose that there is still will be even more brave booksellers who still returned the biography of Mitterrand to the publisher. In any case, with the Standaardketen it is only obtainable by ordering the book.

That brings me to Filip Dewinter, whose book Inch’Allah, published by the controversial publishing house Egmont (which dares to publish books written by VB members and is therefore “controversial”), has been refused by almost all Flemish booksellers, including all those of the Standaardketen. The result is that a damp basement smell came to spread over it: this has become an “underground” book, something of a an out-of-place samizdat, a samizdat under liberal state rule… I therefore have up to now been unable to read it. But a kind friend of mine, an old Dutch social democrat who is absolutely without even the tiniest little stain, has managed to obtain one in some dark alley. After having read it he sent me an email in which he expressed his astonishment about the alleged “radicalism” of Dewinter. There was absolutely nothing improper in his work, in which the volkstribuun obviously quoted from all kinds of sources, nothing that might infringe against any legislation, let alone that it would contain calls to violence. For Dewinter would never do that.

Naturally it does contain views that to the ears of many politically-correct thinking person are indecent. But such is the game of democracy. A boycott — de facto censorship — opposes everything we should hold dear. I am an opponent of the Vlaams Belang. I have studied the old and the new party program. I do not believe in state corporatism. I do not believe in a two-state solution to Belgium. I do believe in multiculturalism, however, when it is between Flemish and French speakers.

I further believe that Islam is only compatible with liberal democracy when it is, so to speak, prepared to add water to its wine. Dewinter probably proclaims the same position in his book, and therefore we will objectively agree on that, even though many emotionally-correct souls will faint at such idea. But I will never vote for him.

Let me quote Sanctorum again: “It does says a lot about the mental condition of the Flemish booksellers world (controlled via boek.be [335 booksellers] by the green Stalinist Jos Geysels [3], one of the masterminds of the cordon sanitaire against the VB) and it most of all shows how deep the mechanisms of censorship and self-censorship actually are doing their work in our so called democracy. (…) I want the VB on the tribunes, without being taken for a VB’er.”

Calling Jos Geysels a Stalinist might be a sizable blunder, as well as the claim by Sanctorum that the cordon sanitaire emerged from a Belgicistic reflex. I have yet to observe the first Belgicistic reflex in the nervous system of Jos Geysels. But for the rest, Sanctorum is right.

Les alliances se renversent.

Translation #2:

Censorship in Flanders

By Koen Dillen

Open letter to “De Groene Waterman” bookstore

Dear —,

In the [magazine] Knack recently — I assume that it was not an April Fools’ joke — I read that you have taken my book on the French President François Mitterrand from your shelves because the undersigned was behind the pseudonym Vincent Gounod and Maarten van der Roest. In the “Standard Bookstores” the book is available, however, but only when ordered. In the Netherlands the book is in all bookshop windows. Please allow me to make a few observations herein.

• “De Groene Waterman” [bookstore in Antwerp] does not censor me because of the contents of my book, otherwise you would not have put it on display those many months ago and sold it for all that time. No, you do not censor on the content, as you state yourself, but on identity. Vlaams Belangers are not allowed in, period. Not that what is written in a book disturbs the censor, but the one who writes it. I can not imagine a more infallible example of essentialistic thinking.
  
• In the Netherlands, the leftist VPRO radio in its Sunday book program on March 29, after an undoubtedly much too positive review of my book, responded, intrigued by the fact that a Flemish Vlaams Belanger has to publish a book in Flanders under a pseudonym. “We actually should talk with that man,” the presiding journalist said at the end of the discussion. But Flanders is not the Netherlands. In Flanders today an omertà applies to the publications of Vlaams Belang members, even if it is about writings that have nothing to do with “party politics”.
  
• Aspect Publishers is a publishing house that does not commit the sin of thinking inside the box. The CIDI (Center for Information and Documentation Israel) publishes with them, just like [Dutch PM] Jan Peter Balkenende who published his book Different and Better there. They published Leon Trotsky’s biography of Stalin in a reissue; the Dutch Socialist Party leader Jan Marijnissen had his book New Optimism and Ronald van Raak his The Rich and Red Life, with a foreword by the same Marijnissen, published there. The left-wing Flemish writer Piet de Moor published a smoothly written anti-Vlaams Belang pamphlet under the title “Letters to my postman”. Will Tura and Peter Vandermeersch [but also the experts on leftist politics Carel Brendel and leftist terrorism Peter Siebelt] are on its list of writers. Both leftist and rightist authors are welcome.
  
• When a few years ago, the Stalinist hagiography Another View of Stalin by the Maoist Ludo Martens was offered for sale and triggered many pages of reviews in the Flemish press, you made no objection, and that is the way it should be. The book by my colleague Karim van Overmeire on the battle of the golden spurs, could not be sold anywhere, because he is a Vlaams Belang member. That is the way things are in Flanders today.
  
• The Netherlands evolved since the Fortuyn revolt [2002]. But the leftists’ church in Flanders today still has a problem with intellectual diversity. In this I am not lumping all leftist intellectuals together. Whoever opens the book François Mitterrand, will see that I have dedicated my book to the late Georges Adé (1936-1992), who after his death in October 1992 was honored in an obituary on the front page of De Morgen [leftist newspaper]. He also belonged to that Flemish leftists’ church and even wrote — under the pseudonym Laurent Veydt — “Nouveaux Romans”, a flaming pamphlet against the “New Right”. But he was also an inspiring professor on French literature at the Katholieke Vlaamse Hogeschool [Catholic Flemish University] who taught generations of students, including myself, a love for French language and literature. Open-minded and certainly not someone who would censor books because of the identity of the author. He was also in those days a wildly enthusiastic promoter of my dissertation on the French writer and collaborator Robert Brasillach.
  
• And then Mitterrand. Does “De Groene Waterman” bookstore know that the Socialist President idolized the writer Drieu la Rochelle, a Don Juan just like himself, fascist, anti-Semite, collaborator, friend of Aragon and Malraux, and during the German occupation head of the Nouvelle Revue Française of Gallimard? Or that he idolized Jacques Chardonne [pseudonym for Jacques Boutelleau], who was from his native region, “wrong” during the war and visited Goebbels in 1942? [All writers whose books are available in “De Groene Waterman”, and quite a few of those books, as well as many others of the publishing house Gallimard, are on the shelves]

The self-declared Flemish intellectuals speak with full disgust of the book-burnings in National Socialist Germany, but in practice they prove themselves to be the good students of that system. In the year 2009 the books of political opponents are not even burnt anymore, they are simply not published.

I would like to call on the real free intellectuals in Flanders: please take this opportunity to denounce the foolish censorship and contemporary book-burnings.

Translation #3:

It rustles again under the counter…

Open letter

Introduction

Note: This open letter on political correct censorship in Flanders was published in the newspaper “De Standard”. The fact that 36 Flemish “opinion makers” (now renamed the dirty three dozen, thanks to querulous Piet De Moor [a writer and leftist appeaser]) signed the letter, including heavyweights such as Etienne Vermeersch (philosopher) and Hugo Coveliers (former VLD [Flemish Liberals] senator and founder of the party VLOTT that cooperates with Vlaams Belang in Antwerp), did not prevent this “quality” newspaper from censoring themselves and deleting a few lines [here in red, and in the text below stripped out] without any consultation with the initiators. The URL to Dewinter’s blog that the “opinion makers” had added to the text also mysteriously disappeared.

Open letter

The “Gounod/Dillen affair” shows that we find ourselves in an actual state of censorship.

The story may be known: an outstanding biography on Mitterrand, hailed by many, including “Klara” [radio program] and NRC Handelsblad [1], and signed by Vincent Gounod, was actually written by the VB politician Koen Dillen. Whereupon sensible-minded Flanders completely went out of its mind and made sure that the book can hardly be obtained anymore in the normal outlets. In the Netherlands, however, the book is displayed in the open in the shop windows. Are we back in the days of the Adult Merchandise?

The incident unveils the deeper malaise within the exposed cultural and academic universe in our region. The famous “cordon” around a particular party, which name we will leave you to guess here for strategic reasons, has apparently ensured that books no longer need to be read to form an opinion on their content. We do not want to lose ourselves in a yes-no debate about whether the Antwerp “leftist bookstore with a clear profile,” removed the book from its shelves or not (there are different views on this). The fact remains that the biography of Mitterrand, as written by Koen Dillen, is not a racist nor xenophobic or negationist book, but simply caused a lot of fuss because the author walks around with the label “wrong” stuck to his forehead, because of which he felt forced to use a pseudonym.

Flanders seems to be divided in a politically-correct half with access to the media, that quickly finds a publisher, that is manning the obligatory BV bevy; and on the other side a shadowy continent of undiscussable, forbidden, banned from the public sphere politisch-unfähige people, as it was called under Nazi rule. That the book sector here is showing its most cowardly side is also clear. In most bookstores and large booksellers the famous Mitterrand biography is, since Gounod’s identity has been revealed as Koen Dillen, only available “on request”. This is a de facto state of censorship, under which even the sacred cow of commerce is slaughtered (Dillen’s book would have been a blockbuster by now) to safeguard our souls from slurs. It is well-known that boek.be, the organizer of the Antwerp Book Fair, still makes use of a list of undesirable authors and forbidden publishers.

“The leftists’ church in Flanders today still has a problem with intellectual diversity,” Dillen rightly concludes. Indeed. The term “controversy”, that is absolutely necessary in a mature democracy, complete evaporates here. And even if his book were not consistent with politically sensible thinking, even if it were as “wrong” as possible, even then, and precisely then, the book world should embrace it, because it would call for counter-arguments and provoke responses. This is know “polemic”, a hazardous enterprise in Flanders.

For this reason we wish to stand up for the free sale of Filip Dewinter’s pamphlet Inch’Allah. This does not mean a position on the book, the author, or his party. But as long as a publication does not call for violence — as the book by Filip Dewinter certainly does not do — any factual censorship is a ridiculous display of political immaturity.

We, from the left to right, want to distance ourselves formally from that censorship. It is about time that Flanders woke up from its politically correct snooze to finally get acquainted with the art of the dialectic.

Ludo Abicht, lecturer philosophy
Vital Baeken (“Vitalski”), writer
Benno Barnard, writer
Geert Beullens, writer-performer
Gerard Bodifee, author
Mimount Bousakla, politician
Hugo Coveliers, lawyer
Thierry Debels, author-publicist
Saskia De Coster, writer
Eric Defoort, historian
Leo de Haes, publisher
Gust De Meyer, professor KUL
Peter De Roover, publicist
Willem Elias, professor VUB
Derk Jan Eppink, publicist-politician
Valerie Lempereur, publisher
Bart Maddens, politicoloog
Marc Platel, journalist
André Posman, artistic director “De Rode Pomp”, Gent
Godfried-Willem Raes, music maker — philosopher
Jean-Pierre Rondas, producer VRT Radio Klara
Johan Sanctorum, philosopher-author
Matthias Storme, attorney
Johan Swinnen, professor VUB & Artesis Hogeschool
Frank Thevissen, communication-expert
Jef Turf, ex-journalist, publicist
Luc Van Braekel, blogger
Jan Van de Casteele, chief editor “Doorbraak”
Gie van den Berghe, ethic
Luc van Doorslaer, academic-journalist
Marc Vanfraechem, blogger
Geert van Istendael, writer
Wim van Rooy, publicist
Jan Verheyen, filmmaker
Jos Verhulst, publicist
Etienne Vermeersch, moral philosopher
Jurgen Verstrepen, politician
Julien Weverbergh, publisher

Notes:

[1]		NRC Handelsblad, once a conservative “quality newspaper (nowadays unfortunately politically correct and controversial) which has had for decades a still highly respected — and very critical — book review section, judged [few quotes]: “Vincent Gounod’s interpretation [of the facts in Miterrand’s life] is critical but in balance. […] Gounod convinces because the analysis is very precise, with much feeling for the historic context and political environment […] Intrigues, betrayal, revenge and — incidentally —, mercy in Mitterrand’s dance for political power exchange with each other in a breathtaking speed in the two sections ‘ambition’ and ‘power’ of which the book is made. […] A biography that exceeds the common political portrait of a president. This is therefore also a “handbook on politics” because of the stunning insight it offers in the kitchen of the phenomenon of power-politics.” The NRC Handelsblad has selected the book to be offered in their online bookstore.
[2]		Groene Waterman booksellers: A search on the author name Dewinter produces only two books by Filip Dewinter. But none of them as it shows are in the shop, and seemingly the publisher is “out of stock”. Also a search on “Gounod” shows that his book on Mitterrand in not in the shop and gives no information on the availability with the publisher. They do have books by Abu Jahjah on the shelves, however, the Lebanese/Belgian anti-Semite Hizbollah terrorist and founder of the AEL who only recently threatened to invade the Jewish neighborhood in Antwerp, to which threat only Filip Dewinter responded furiously.
[3]		Jos Geysels is chairman aft 11.11.11, a Belgian anti-Semite “development aid” organization. In 2008 Geysels was given a tour in Gaza by the UNRWA in connection with his campaign “60 years homeless”. In 2006 the 11.11.11 organization demanded on behalf of the “Action Platform Palestine” a conviction of Israel (embargos, scrapping treaties, the works) for “violating the rule of war” (in their defense against the rocket attacks by Hamas, by arresting Hamas leaders and destroying a number of rocket launch sites). Only recently, Diophantes reported in a review in the Belgian magazine “Joods Actueel” [“Jewish Actuality”] on the book How Good is the Good Purpose, a critical book on development aid, that out of every 100 euros in donations to 11.11.11, only 1 euro was spent on aid.

Open Hands and Large Hearts

According to this report we’ve done it again. America leads the world in charitable giving. And it’s not the wealthy corporations, or the Bill Gates-type donors who are the backbone of charity:

Donors contributed an estimated $295.02 billion in 2006, a 1 percent increase when adjusted for inflation, up from $283.05 billion in 2005. Excluding donations for disaster relief, the total rose 3.2 percent, inflation-adjusted, according to an annual report released Monday by the Giving USA Foundation at Indiana University’s Center on Philanthropy.

Giving historically tracks the health of the overall economy, with the rise amounting to about one-third the rise in the stock market, according to Giving USA. Last year was right on target, with a 3.2 percent rise as stocks rose more than 10 percent on an inflation-adjusted basis.

“What people find especially interesting about this, and it’s true year after year, that such a high percentage comes from individual donors,” Giving USA Chairman Richard Jolly said. [“Jolly” is a jolly good name for a charities oversight chairman —D]

Individuals gave a combined 75.6 percent of the total. With bequests, that rises to 83.4 percent.

The biggest chunk of the donations, $96.82 billion or 32.8 percent, went to religious organizations. The second largest slice, $40.98 billion or 13.9 percent, went to education, including gifts to colleges, universities and libraries.

About 65 percent of households with incomes less than $100,000 give to charity, the report showed.

Why is this not surprising? The donations that the Republican Party receives are largely from individual donors — that’s why staying on message for their base is more important than it is for the Dems, who are underwritten by Soros and Hollywood and the unions.

And conservatives give more to charity than do liberals…or perhaps give more meaningfully. Remember when Hillary took a tax deduction for donating Bill’s old underwear to charity?

This report noticed the same thing de Tocqueville did — Americans operate from a sense of abundance. They give because they are hopeful, they are optimists, and they know there is more where that came from. Besides, they sincerely believe in the adage about bread cast upon the waters:

“It tells you something about American culture that is unlike any other country,” said Claire Gaudiani, a professor at NYU’s Heyman Center for Philanthropy and author of “The Greater Good: How Philanthropy Drives the American Economy and Can Save Capitalism.” Gaudiani said the willingness of Americans to give cuts across income levels, and their investments go to developing ideas, inventions and people to the benefit of the overall economy.

Gaudiani said Americans give twice as much as the next most charitable country, according to a November 2006 comparison done by the Charities Aid Foundation. In philanthropic giving as a percentage of gross domestic product, the U.S. ranked first at 1.7 percent. No. 2 Britain gave 0.73 percent, while France, with a 0.14 percent rate, trailed such countries as South Africa, Singapore, Turkey and Germany.

Having been the recipients of others’ generosity during the Baron’s unemployment, I can say that while donations came from everywhere — even Berkeley — the majority of our givers were Texans and Aussies. Many gave more than once.

This news report doesn’t even mention the Australians, so I went looking for some larger reference. Here’s one [.pdf] from the World Bank for 2005:


Notice that the Anglosphere dominates when it comes to sharing.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Does anyone have an idea why that might be? I mean, a theory with some philosophical underpinnings? If so, I’d like to hear them, especially the ones that don’t bleat about our superiority. As I said, such largesse must come from a fundamental optimism.

But from whence does that optimism flow? Is it perhaps a sense — rightly or wrongly — that we have the freedom to make individual choices about how we will make our way in the world?

Does that optimism flow from a sense of gratitude for all we have?

And while we’re at it, what is your favorite charity…and why?

I’ll go first: Grameen most touches my capitalist heart, but I am also enamored of courageous individuals like Michael Yon and Bill Roggio. When the Baron was still working as an employee, I gave money to Michael Yon so he could buy some night vision glasses and not get killed.

On the other hand, when the time came to support Bill Roggio’s embed in Iraq, we didn’t have any money to spare, so I sent him an explanation and an IOU. Do you know what he did? He sent us a contribution!

How’s that for an open heart?

Will Egyptian “Democracy” Reconquer Jerusalem?

Yusuf al-Qaradawi is an Egyptian-born fundamentalist cleric and a prominent leader of the Muslim Brotherhood. The Ikhwan has been suppressed by the Egyptian establishment for decades, so Sheikh Qaradawi has lived in exile in Qatar for almost fifty years.

Now the Egyptian establishment has collapsed at last, and today Yusuf al-Qaradawi returned triumphantly to Cairo and spoke to a crowd of thousands of cheering supporters in Tahrir Square.

Al-Ahram gave a brief account of his appearance in its live blog this afternoon:

12:19 Yusuf al-Qaradawi gives the Friday sermon from a podium in Tahrir Square to the hundreds of thousands in attendance. He praises the January 25 revolution, describing it as an “educated” one. Al-Qaradawi adds that it was not only Mubarak Egypt’s youths defeated, they also defeated injustice and oppression.

12:33 Al-Qaradawi extols Egyptians to persevere with their revolution as it “continues to build a new Egypt” and should be “protect[ed] from hypocrites.” He condemns the regime for being the source of sectarianism in Egypt while in “here in Tahrir”, Christians and Muslims strove side-by-side for their revolution.

12:40 Al-Qaradawi praises the army’s statements on democratic transition and asks them to liberate Egypt from Mubarak’s cabinet.

12:56 Al-Qaradawi calls on the “brave Egyptian army” to open the Rafah crossing so that Gazans can receive the supplies they need. Turning his attention to arab leaders, he says: “Don’t fight history, you can’t delay the day when it starts. The Arab world has changed.”

Voice of America described the occasion:

Thousands of supporters of Egypt’s democracy movement are gathered in Cairo’s Tahrir Square Friday for a day of celebration marking one week since President Hosni Mubarak stepped down.

A leading Muslim cleric, Yusuf al-Qaradawi called on the Egyptian army to listen to the will of the people and bring fresh faces into Mr. Mubarak’s former cabinet, which still includes many of the former president’s allies.

The cleric also called on the Egyptian people to be patient with their new leadership. The Egyptian army, which has popular support, has assumed control of the government until elections can be held.

Based on this account, the Sheikh would seem to be a mild-mannered sort of fellow, the kind of “moderate” we can work with. No mention of the inflammatory rhetoric he has used in the past — or perhaps VOA is unaware of it.

The News has a bit more:

The influential Sunni scholar Yusuf al Qaradawi addressed the huge crowd during a Friday prayer sermon.

Praising the revolution, he called on Arab leaders to listen to their people.

Qaradawi, an Egyptian-born cleric who has lived in Qatar since the early 1960s, is considered to be a leading intellectual and religious figure, with close links to the Muslim Brotherhood.

The group was officially banned under the Mubarak regime, though its activities were largely tolerated.

Next comes a brief mention of an incident that takes some of the shine off the “Cairo Spring”. Like the beating and gang-rape of Lara Logan, we can expect the MSM to discuss this development as little as possible:

Confronting the Enemy

 
President Bush made an excellent speech on Tuesday at Bolling Air Force Base, outlining the scope and rationale of the war on terror — which he once again identified as a struggle against “Islamo-fascism:”

Some call this evil Islamic radicalism; others, militant Jihadism; still others, Islamo-fascism. Whatever it is called, this ideology is very different from the religion of Islam.

Mr. President, are you sure that’s true?

There is, of course, no way of knowing whether Mr. Bush believes this. Given the political exigencies, it is necessary for him to say it. His statement does, however, beg the central question of our time:

Does violent jihad represent the essence of the religion of Islam?

And the corollary:

Is the existence of the “moderate Muslim” possible?

I don’t pretend to be able to answer these questions, nor do I think it is possible to answer them yet. But they should be uppermost in our minds as we watch current political events unfolding across the world, and especially those unfolding across the bloody littorals of Islam.

The central problem is that Islam is more than a religion. It is a blueprint for political action, one whose core text requires the adherent to be violent in the pursuit of political goals. In this respect Muslims bear more resemblance to Communists than they do to Presbyterians.

But there are peaceable Muslims. The ones I know personally look and act like ordinary Americans. The women don’t wear the hijab, and the girls go to school and act like any other American kids.

But these Muslims are also not particularly observant; they don’t pray five times a day or visit the mosque very often. They are roughly equivalent to “lapsed Catholics.”

So I am still left with the open question:

Will the truly observant Muslim always engage in or support violent jihad?

A lively discussion emerged in the comments section of my post yesterday (I recommend the entire thread, which is full of thoughtful and vehement argument by a variety of people). In response to some of the more bellicose commenters, Cato said this:

	Do you really think all billion muslims hate the west that implacably? Do you think there is any practical program that will lead to the elimination (or forcible conversion) of all the planet’s muslims?
	I often wonder where the logic of “all Islam is out to get us so we had better do something about it” leads.

So where does it lead? If the enemy is in our midst, but not actively pursuing violence at the moment, what do we do? And are all Muslims our enemies?

We know that some of them are, and it is a reasonable assumption there are some among us who are even now planning to harm us. But is the proper response to declare that all Muslims are our enemies?

If all Muslims are in fact our enemies, then we will have to take concrete action. The first step would be to require them all to register with the government so that they could be monitored. Next they would have to be disarmed. Then we would need to require them to display some sign so that we could recognize them as the enemy, say a yellow crescent and star sewn onto their outer clothing. The next step would be to gather them all together in secure camps removed from the rest of the populace, so that they could do us no harm. Then…

Wait a minute. We’ve seen that road before, and we’re not going to follow it.

The civil liberties accorded citizens of this country protect people from being targeted simply for their beliefs or membership in a particular group. Yet members of a particular group are plotting to do the country harm by murder, mayhem, and levying insurrection. If they succeed in their diabolical plans and unleash a devastating attack within our borders, people may well take the law into their own hands and civil liberties will be thrown out the window.

I don’t buy the idea that we should just be quiet and let domestic law enforcement do its job. I’m certain that it has indeed interdicted many terrorist attacks since 9/11, but Able Danger and Annie Jacobsen’s experience on Flight 327 and the Jamaat ul-Fuqra compounds and the farce that masquerades as airport security have all convinced me that incompetence rages throughout the system.

So what can be done?

First and foremost is to propagate as much information as possible. Turn over every rock. Open all the closet doors and turn on the lights. Bust open all the rotten stumps so we can see the termites inside. Spread the word, because that is what the blogosphere is for.

But let’s be sure we distinguish fact from speculation and rumor. And above all, remember that incitement to violence is the enemy’s specialty, not ours.

The second tactic is political. We are not going to be able to control the mujahideen in our midst if we don’t shrug off all the politically correct nonsense that hobbles us, and also control our borders. The current administration seems to have no will to do either of these things, and the next administration, no matter which party takes office, is unlikely to do any better.

Therefore we’re going to have to throw out an awful lot of rascals, and elect people who will shake the entrenched bureaucracy until its back teeth rattle.

Any other ideas out there? This is an open forum. Somewhere between the extremes of “Islam is a religion of peace” and “nuke the ragheads” is a course of action which will protect American citizens and also secure their liberties. I invite you to help me find it.

Calling all armchair generals! Gather at the Gates and make yourselves heard!


UPDATE: Best comment so far, by peggy:

I have been saying for a long time that the solution to the problem that islam poses is a simple one if we only have the courage and vision to pursue it relentlessly.

Just tell the truth about it.

The truth is our greatest weapon. We should only resort to other means if our free speech to protest against islam were threatened by the powers that be and then it is our right as citizens to fight those powers. The average muslim person should never have to worry about our intentions towards their persons or families or property or businesses or prayer centers as long they abide by the laws of our land.

If we keep to the high ground, we should with time be able to turn things around. The first idea we must get across with meticulous care is this: It is possible to oppose islam without bearing hatred towards all those who believe it and everyone should be able to freely and openly dispute the ideas and beliefs of others by right as long as they dont call for violence against the other group in an indiscriminate way that would hurt peaceable folks.

A big problem with islam and muslims is that they do not understand this. They equate open rejection of their beliefs as hatred and bigotry mainly because their own leaders encourage them to do so by their example. But coming as they do from their original environment which is devoid of the hurly-burly of true democracy and liberty, they are easily mislead to shut their ears to the "bigots" who dislike all muslims and are encouraged to dismiss all criticism of their religion as ignorant. If we happen to think that islam is the worst idea for a religion there ever was but have no inclination to hate those who believe in it then we have to distinguish ourselves from the true haters by our conduct, by our charity and hospitality towards all.

Gender Warfare Without the Glass Ceilings

And now for an update on the Muslim gender war….

Where to start???

Here’s one: on December 7th in Riadyh, an announcement by the Philippine Embassy to its domestic workers in Saudi Arabia will probably take the prize for 2005’s Fatuous Double Speak Award.

	Philippine Embassy officials have reminded Filipino women in the Kingdom to avoid going out of their residence at night so as not to get into trouble.
	They also urged compatriots not to encourage workers who have complaints against their employers to run away because doing so would only complicate matters.

Want to know why this particular piece of advice — fabricated so as to cover the maximum amount of Embassy gluteus maximus — was issued?

For the same reason all of their pronouncements to their domestic workers are extruded from the wind-up doll they use to make these assinine statements: another domestic worker attempted to escape her Saudi employer and ran from the frying pan into the fire. When her story became public knowledge, they were forced to haul out the robot and push the right words through his mouth tube. Here’s what the tin man said:

Filipino women: Do-not-go-out-of-residence-at-night-in-Kingdom-You-will-get-into-trouble-Do-not-encourage-other-workers-to- run-away-Running-away-complicates-matters.

	The victim told embassy officials that she ran away at about 8 p.m. one night last month to avoid the alleged sexual advances of her employer.
	“I was walking hurriedly when five young men pulled me into a pickup and drove me to a house just a few blocks away from my employer’s residence,” she said.
	She said seven young men took turns on her and gave her away later to another group of five young men, who also gang-raped her inside a tinted van as they cruised along the streets.
	The rapists were reportedly playing full-volume music and her cry for help were apparently unheard.
	She said her attackers also took her gold earrings and necklace plus SR1,000 cash.
	Embassy personnel found her on a street seven hours later, almost naked. She was placed under the custody of Bahay Kalinga (shelter house) and given medical treatment.

She stayed at the shelter about a month and declined to file any charges. Her former employer returned her visa to her and paid her plane fare back to Manila. Wasn’t that nice of him? Maybe it was a birthday present: she turned twenty while staying at the refuge for battered domestics.

That’s one story. Wash, rinse, repeat endlessly in the Kingdom of Evil Saud. I’d have harsher words for the Philippine Embassy except that they’re caught between a rock and a hard place. These domestic slaves pump a lot of money back into the home economy. At least when they’re paid they do.

For the next Muslim gender war story, we fly on to Sweden, where Muslim immigrant men make no excuses for their treatment of Swedish infidel women:

“It is not as wrong raping a Swedish girl as raping an Arab girl,” says Hamid [link is in Swedish]. “The Swedish girl gets a lot of help afterwards, and she had probably fucked before, anyway. But the Arab girl will get problems with her family. For her, being raped is a source of shame. It is important that she retains her virginity until she marries.” It was no coincidence that it was a Swedish girl that was gang raped in Rissne – this becomes obvious from the discussion with Ali, Hamid, Abdallah and Richard. All four have disparaging views on Swedish girls, and think this attitude is common among young men with immigrant background. “It is far too easy to get a Swedish whore…… girl, I mean;” says Hamid, and laughs over his own choice of words. “Many immigrant boys have Swedish girlfriends when they are teenagers. But when they get married, they get a proper woman from their own culture who has never been with a boy. That’s what I am going to do. I don’t have too much respect for Swedish girls. I guess you can say they get fucked to pieces.”

The rate of rape and other violent crimes by Muslim immigrants in Sweden is difficult to ascertain. Sweden’s suicidal multi-cultural choke on freedom of the press makes it hard to know exactly how many young women are being victimized. The most basic of freedoms, the inviolability of the person, has been tied to a rock, put in a burlap bag, and dropped into the sea in Sweden. The ugly sister, P.C.-Speak, has taken Liberty's place.

But the numbers of victims are not nearly so important nor as lethal as the motive behind the systematic degradation of women by Muslim men. As Fjordman says:

The number of rapes committed by Muslim immigrants in Western nations are so extremely high that it is difficult to view them only as random acts of individuals. It resembles warfare. Muhammad himself had forced sex (rape) with several of his slave girls/concubines. This is perfectly allowed, both in the sunna and in the Koran. If you postulate that many of the Muslims in Europe view themselves as a conquering army and that European women are simply war booty, it all makes perfect sense and is in full accordance with Islamic law. Western women are not so much regarded by most Muslims as individuals, but as "their women," the women who "belong" to hostile Infidels. They are booty, to be taken, just as the land of the Infidels someday will drop, it is believed, into Muslim hands. This is not mere crime, but ideologically-justified crime or rather, in Muslim eyes, attacks on Infidels scarcely qualify as crime. Western women are cheap and offensive. We Muslims are here, here to stay, and we have a right to take advantage of this situation. It is our view of the matter that should prevail. Western goods, like the land on which we now live, belong to Allah and to the best of men -- his Believers. Western women, too, essentially belong to us -- our future booty. No wonder there is a deep and increasing suspicion against Muslims in the Swedish and European public.

What Fjordman says makes sense in one context, but not in all of them. Many of the Indonesian victims of gang rape in Saudi Arabia are Muslim girls, not infidel whores. This is just another example of taqiyya at work.

Islam practices misogyny of a most muderous kind. All women — not just infidel women — are potential booty. Objects. Disposable containers. One has only to observe how women are treated in Muslim countries to know you wouldn’t want to be a Muslim woman if you had any say about it.

But Swedish girls want to fight back so they've invented something to protect themselves:

	A group of Swedish teenage girls has designed a belt that requires two hands to remove and which they hope will deter would-be rapists…
	"It's like a reverse chastity belt," one of the creators, 19-year-old Nadja Björk, [said]… meaning that the wearer is in control, instead of being controlled.
	The military-style buckle has a latch that the wearer has to move through a labyrinth into the correct position in order to unlock the belt.
	"You need two hands to open it, so the rapist can't hold you down and open it at the same time. It takes a while to figure it out if you don't know what you're doing," she said.
	The product was designed as part of a high school project in entrepreneurship and the girls have already sold 300 of the belts in Sweden, priced at 150 kronor.
	Björk and one of her partners now plan to start a business to mass produce the belts and are currently in negotiations with potential partners.
	"But I'm not doing this for the money," she said. "I'm really passionate about stopping rape…

Her youth and passion are endearing. However, wait till one of those young women run into a group of Muslim men who don’t find their protection of themselves amusing. Nadja, how many times do you have to get punched before you’ll gladly undo that belt buckle you invented?It’s not just rape, my dear, it’s systematic degradation. If you don’t understand this, ask your fellow countrywoman,who made the mistake of going out to celebrate New Year's Eve with a friend. Here's how her year ended at the hands of five Somali Muslims. Do you think, Nadja, that your belt would have helped her? I don't. I think it would have enraged her attackers even more. They don't let you have guns over there, do they, my girl? Lacking armament, I suggest you consider the oldest weapon women have: men. Belt or no belt, don't leave home without several testosterone-filled humans for back-up.

Otherwise, until your country can make some provision for protection of its women, move here and join the NRA. We'd love to have an entrepreneurial soul like you.

MOA on Parade in Binghamton

Last week I reported on the parade scheduled for this past Saturday in downtown Binghamton, NY, by the Muslims of America. The occasion for the celebration was the first annual observance of Mohammed’s birthday in Binghamton.

Our Binghamton correspondent MM was there, and emailed us to say that the event went off as scheduled, despite the inclement weather. She sent us the following report, along with some photos:

The event was referred to as being first “annual” and a “parade and festival”. It was pretty much just the participants from Islamberg with almost no non-Islamic spectators. I counted maybe six average joes watching from the sidewalk, plus a couple of local police on each of three blocks directing traffic, and two local media people. One was from the local Press and Sun-Bulletin newspaper and the other from the local Fox TV station. After the parade, during the speeches, I noticed almost no non-Islamic onlookers.


I arrived fairly early and stood for while the people were still lining up for the parade. While I waited, there was a Christian fellow who came over near me and started shouting about Jesus. He was right near the police and not close enough to the parade-walkers to cause a scene.

The parade folks walked for several blocks and then over a bridge and a couple more blocks, and then they turned around and walked back to where they started. They sang a song while walking and there were many women and children marchers. There were several banners being held up for different organizations. Among them were some kind of Islamic scouting group, one banner that had Islamberg written on it somewhere, and one for the “Hand to Hands” group. Also: the first one was for the International Quranic Open University.

After the parade-goers were down the road a bit, another Christian guy showed up with a big sign. Neither of those two Christian guys caused any kind of big disturbance. There weren’t any political protesters. I expected the Indymedia/progressive types to show up in solidarity since Binghamton has a big progressive presence, but. I sure didn’t notice anyone like that. I also didn’t see Tarik Abdelazim [the deputy mayor] anywhere.

After the parade they all went and sat down in front of the courthouse. They had a big stage set up for the speakers and a bunch of chairs in front on the right for the women and children, and some chairs on the left under a tent for the main men.

Before I mention the speakers, I should also add that the “festival” was basically just the speakers plus a couple small tents which I assume featured items for sale underneath.

Now onto the speakers: they started things off by singing the national anthem accompanied by some drumming. Then someone recited from the Koran, and a second person did the same. Then Matt Ryan the Binghamton Mayor spoke about unity between Islam and Christianity for a couple of minutes. The next speaker was Rev. Douglas Taylor of the Unitarian Universalist church in Binghamton, and he spoke for a while about unity as well.

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The final speech was by Diane O’Heron, a professor at Broome Community College. It was so cold out that I was shivering, and I left.


While watching the speakers, I had a good view of what was happening on the outskirts towards the back of the stage and I noticed a couple guys talking into walkie-talkie-like devices, so I guess those were the security people that you mentioned. Those were the only ones that looked anything like security people, and the police presence was tiny, just used to direct traffic.

There is a story about the parade in the Press & Sun-Bulletin, and some more photos are here. WICZ Fox 40 has a video clip of the event.

The “security people” MM refers to are the private security companies run by Jamaat ul-Fuqra and the MOA out of their various compounds around the country. Some observers believe that the security companies are a stratagem used by JuF to acquire large quantities of weaponry and ammunition in a semi-legal manner.

The International Quranic Open University, as I have reported previously, is essentially a book and tape marketing operation for Sheikh Syed Mubarik Ali Shah Gilani, the founder and head of the Muslims of America and Jamaat ul-Fuqra. The sheikh hosts some — ahem — unorthodox academic disciplines at his University.

For example, here’s a blurb for Quranic Psychiatry:

Book 1, Ultimate Fraud of Freudists contains results of a research and demonstration project done at the Psychiatric Research Institute, Saudi Arabia — and U.S.A Research Centers since 1977. In front of researchers from eight countries, El Sheikh Syed Mubarik Ali Shah Jilani, Vice Chancellor of International Quranic Open University, demonstrated the affects of chapters and lines from Holy Quran in healing some “incurable” mental and physical diseases. Since a large number of patients have been healed by the qualified practitioner of Quranic Psychiatry (QOU), this book gives theoretical and practical explanations of causes and remedies of many “incurable” diseases.

El Sheikh Jilani was declared Imam of Quranic Sciences in a meeting of physicians and researchers in Taif. Afterwards, Dr. Rushdee Mahmood was inspired to write a long poem in Arabic extolling the extraordinary title and honor bestowed upon his eminence El Sheikh Syed Mubarik Ali Shah Jilani, Hashmi, Wal Husseini.

Also there’s The Science of Interpreting Events Seen During Sleep and Awakened States and the Method of Directing and Averting the Ill Affects:

The International Quranic Open University Inc. is pleased to produce this most valuable and informative documentary which concerns every person. No one can afford to remain ignorant of the least basic knowledge of understanding and knowing the interpretation of events seen during sleep and awakened state. Allah taught this to Hazrat Yoosuf (as) and the purpose was not only to teach him, but to also give him knowledge of averting and directing the harmful affects of things seen. We see that Pharaoh, the then ruler of Egypt, saw in his sleep state 7 lean cows devouring 7 fat cows. Similarly, there is a lot in Surah Yoosuf for us to learn. Hazrat Yoosuf interpreted not only what it meant, but also adapted various methods to combat the ill affects of the 7 years of famine by which this beholding meant.

The IQOU is just one of a number of income streams that help the sheikh live in style in his mansion in Lahore. The residents of Islamberg and the other JuF compounds make up another stream — members of Jamaat ul-Fuqra are required to send 30% of their income home to the sheikh. When you add in the proceeds from all the alleged fraud and other criminal schemes, it’s clear that the sheikh has a nice little racket going.

Jamaat ul-Fuqra means “Community of the Impoverished” in Arabic. Somehow I don’t think Sheikh Gilani is actually a member of that particular community.

October 30: Amsterdam Rally for Free Expression

The judges in the Geert Wilders trial will issue their verdict on November 5th. Despite the fact that the prosecutors have asked that Mr. Wilders be acquitted of all the charges, he may well be convicted.

In response to the persecution of Geert Wilders and other dissidents of the European Counterjihad, a new organization called the European Freedom Initiative has been formed. Its purpose is to promote freedom of speech in Europe, and in particular to support Geert Wilders and protest his trial.

EFI is an umbrella organization, whose member groups include (among others):

International		ICLA
Austria		Mission Europa-Netzwerk Karl Martell
England		EDL
France		Alliance to Stop Sharia and Actions SITA
		LDF
Germany		BPE (Citizens’ Movement Pax Europa)
		Politically Incorrect
Italy		Una Via per Oriana
The Netherlands		Amsterdampost
		DDL

In anticipation of the verdict in the Wilders case, EFI is planning a demonstration in Amsterdam on October 30th. The “anti-fascists” (antifa) are promising a violent confrontation against the defenders of Geert Wilders. For previous articles about the “anti-fascist” thugs, see the bottom of this post.

Below is a press release from EFI about the demonstration on October 30 (a Dutch version of this press release may be read here).


European Freedom Initiative Will Go Ahead With Amsterdam Rally For Free Expression Despite Opposition From Antifa

The European Freedom initiative will demonstrate at Museumplein, Amsterdam on 30 October from 2pm — 5pm. The action will be mounted in support of freedom of speech, and particularly in protest against the outrageous treatment that Geert Wilders has received at the hands of the Dutch state. The intimidation of political dissidents has become a serious problem across Europe and this is something that needs to be opposed.

Since the European Freedom Initiative (EFI) announced its intention to stand up for freedom of expression by demonstrating in Amsterdam so-called ‘anti-fascists’ have been planning counter demonstrations, and goodness knows what else! The EFI is a peaceful citizens movement made up of a diverse group of people from a number of European countries. It has come together in the spirit of international co-operation against a dangerous trend that has come to threaten our most cherished traditions of freedom.

Freedom of expression is the cornerstone of Western Civilisation, and the basis of our open democratic societies. Our political leaders have, for some time now, been undermining that freedom. Geert Wilders was brought to trial because he opposes the spread of sharia, and as a result he has faced intimidation via the judicial system. Many more citizens from across Europe face similar treatment at the hands of an overbearing state.

Antifa are well known across Europe for their violence and intimidation against those whose political beliefs conflict with their own and Antifa groups have pledged to oppose the EFI’s rally for free expression. The efforts of so-called ‘antifascists’, to demonise those who want to oppose the establishment of sharia norms in the Netherlands and across Europe, show a gross disregard for the principles of an open society based on fact and rational debate. It is necessary to ask why they apparently support sharia, which is a total system and not an alternative to a legal system based on equality? Do they really want this barbaric and iniquitous legal code to become entrenched in Europe? Do they believe in the equality of women, the right of people to be honest about their own sexuality, the right of people to have true freedom of religion, and their right to enjoy equality before the law?


Left wing groups recently mobilised against Amsterdam Mayor van der Laans’ attempt to address the problem of squatting in Amsterdam. The result was extreme violence as the scenes at around 1:55 in this video illustrate, violence that is also reported in articles, here, here, here, and here. Some background information about Antifa can be found here, here, and here. How such groups that appear to have so little regard for private property and public safety can lecture others is truly astonishing.

Hiding in Slotervaart

The following article from De Volkskrant, as translated by our Dutch correspondent Bolleke, is about the plight of one elderly couple in the culturally enriched neighborhood of Slotervaart:

Hiding in Slotervaart

by Peter Hilhorst

It is worse than during the war, thinks a couple in Slotervaart (Amsterdam) who are under attack by Moroccan neighbors. Their despair is gripping. They want to feel they are protected.

She came walking out in wooden sandals. I was recording for the television program “De Ombudsman” in the Amsterdam borough of Slotervaart. If I cared about injustice, I had to hear her story.

Blinds

Her apartment looked more like a bunker. For the windows blinds were hanging. Through the half-closed blinds, I saw the windows covered with the unsavory remnants of eggs that neighborhood children had thrown against them. Sometimes rocks were also thrown through the window, she told me. “Since I opened my mouth as the only one.” Everywhere things were packed in boxes. She came towards me. Her husband remained standing. They want to move after forty years. They couldn’t stand it in this neighborhood any longer.

Next door to them lived a Moroccan family with seven children. These children had no respect for them. For anyone. On the street boys hung around and shouted at her: “Hey whore, you want to [satisfy] me for three euros?” Her husband was not happy that she had asked me inside. “They have already seen that he is inside.” I asked who “they” were. They were the street terrorists who intimidated them. “I lived through the war,” said the man, who must have been over seventy, “and this is worse than the war.” Then he began to cry. With his big hands he tried to wave me away, and left the room. They felt like hiding in Slotervaart.

She was homesick, the lady told me. Nostalgia for the days when Slotervaart was a teacher’s neighborhood. A white teacher’s neighborhood. “The people of Morocco have nostalgia for their country, but I have nostalgia for the neighborhood of the past.”

Smuggling

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Now they are leaving. But moving is not easy. They are afraid to let a moving van drive up in front of their house, because “then they will know where we go”. So every day they smuggle a few packed boxes out. But can their generous closets and television be transported unseen? It seems a problem that they have no answer for.

The desperation of the couple is complete. I asked what they wanted me to do. But their answer was as short as it was shocking: nothing. They didn’t want me to do anything. And they certainly would not tell their story on television. They were afraid of reprisals from the neighborhood youths. I offered to contact the police or District Chairman Ahmed Marcouch. But they didn’t feel like it. The police often came to them. It did not help. And in Marcouch they had no confidence whatsoever.

“But don’t you want something done against this harassment?” I finally asked in despair. The man got very restless. He wanted me to go away. When I asked whether I should come again, he shook his head no. Hastily I wrote my name and phone number. In case they changed their minds. They didn’t want to give me their names and phone number. When I went the door I tried to tell them again that what was happening to them was unacceptable, and that action should be taken. But with a conversation at the opened door, she got totally nervous.

Shelter or flee. These seem the only options these people have for themselves. They no longer believe that it makes sense to speak out or stand up for yourself. This is what they have learned. It brings only problems. They have also lost any trust in others. Nobody can even help them.

Gripping

It is mainly this defeatism that makes their despair more moving. They behave like children who are so bullied that they dare not even say they are bullied, out of fear of being harassed even more. So they hide in their bunker in Slotervaart.

But that’s how bullies win. They can continue with impunity. To call a halt to them, it is necessary that the victims open their mouths. Without a formal complaint the hands of the police are tied. Without a complaint, the housing authority and the district government can do very little.

The first thing that should happen is that victims must know that they can open their mouths. That they feel themselves protected. This is not the case. Therefore it was a miracle that this lady in her sandals came out in the first place.

For a complete listing of previous enrichment news, see The Cultural Enrichment Archives.