Camp of the Saints: New Destinations

Despite the agreement between Tunisia and Italy to keep the refugees at home, despite the plans for joint French-Italian patrols in the Mediterranean, the boatloads of cultural enrichment keep arriving in Italy.

Two of the most recent arrivals are interesting, because they landed directly on the Italian mainland, without transiting through Sicily, Lampedusa, or any of the other islands between Tunisia and Italy. The first article concerns a landing at Crotone, on the toe of the Italian boot:

Boat With 20 People Rescued at Crotone

(AGI) Crotone — Italian Police Forces report that a a 14 mt long- boat with possibly 20 immigrants has been seen at about 20 miles off the Ionian coasts of Crotone, the local harbour office has activated rescue procedures. The Squadra Mobile, Italian special police forces are also participating to catch and eventually arrest the boat capitan. The boat’s port of departure is still unknown.

The origin of the first boat was unknown, but the second — which landed on the east coast of the Italian heel — came from Albania. Judging by the cosmopolitan nature of the passenger list, with all those Asian nationalities, it seems unlikely that North African people-smugglers were involved:

Rabid Injustice

The MSM keeps on getting it wrong. About Europe, they are especially likely to get it wrong.

Take this latest essay from The Weekly Standard concerning the recent elections in Finland and the meaning behind the rise of the True Finns Party in that thinly-populated country.

First, some personal background: the Baron has given up on this magazine. I’m the subscriber (it was a gift and has my name on it). Occasionally I’ll point him toward a P.J. O’Rourke column, or some piece of domestic news he hadn’t read elsewhere. However, he’s mostly not interested in reading them anymore. He has sadly learned that American neo-conservatives don’t ‘get’ Europe. Having had a ground level window for the last five years into that huge project known as “the EU”, he no longer has much patience with the skewed, elitist points of view such as those appearing in the Standard.

While I don’t follow events closely, I do listen in on what’s going on and try to sort out who is doing what to whom in individual countries. At supper, or while driving around, the Baron will lay out a situation for me, explaining how he knows what he does and why he thinks a particular event may or may not transpire. It’s enough for me to “get the gist of things” even though I’m not able to enjoy the nitty gritty level of involvement he has come to have with people in the EU who really are in the forefront of the battle to keep their countries and their ethnicities.

Ever since the hate speech trials started, I’ve become more interested in the fate of those who speak out and pay the price for doing so. I am moved by the courage of these people across Europe. They seem such unlikely Davids against the Goliath of the EU. Yet they manage! They survive! They transcend. They leave a history for their children (as I reminded Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff the other day).

So imagine my dismay when I read the essay about the Finnish elections in the April 18th issue of The Weekly Standard. Even the subtitle (“The EU’s bailouts spark an uprising”) sounded a wrong note. According to what I’d been hearing, the Finnish electorate, like many other national groups, is focused on its own identity. Yeah, the bailouts are outrageous, but even if they didn’t exist, Finns — along with the Flemish, the Dutch, the Swedes, the English — are concerned with preserving their cultures. Why is that so hard to grasp?

The Baron claims they don’t get it because The Weekly Standard, like many other magazines, is captive to its own American history and political correctnesses. Thus, when people like George Wallace and his ilk grabbed the issues of their day, they contaminated cultural conservatism. Want to be accepted by the wider American audience? Well, be sure to demonize the right people.

Or rather, the wrong people. The latest example is the way they’re treating Donald Trump’s announced interest in running for the presidency. Because he’s “kind of” on the Right (at least economically) and because he’s a flamboyant businessman, they will deny him any gravitas. Trump-as-candidate doesn’t really interest me. What does intrigue me is this phenomenon, i.e., the manner in which mainstream conservative magazines run away from Trump and others as though they were the carriers of a very infectious social disease. Where’s the political courage to examine a candidate with some sense of fair play or justice? Not at the Standard… and not at National Review either, sad to say.

But that’s just background to my point about how they treated the Finns in this essay. There is much they get wrong; perhaps they don’t want to know. Ethnic nationalism? In Europe? Eww…must be Nazis, right?

As for free speech, they’re not interested. Here’s what they had to say about Jussi Halla-aho:

Certainly, the True Finns are skeptical about immigration. One party member, a Helsinki city councilman, was convicted in 2009 for writing nasty things about immigrants on his website. But the party as a whole is not rabid on the matter.

The writer doesn’t even give the man the respect of naming him before he summarily trashes Jussi Halla-aho’s reputation with the implication that he’s “rabid” on the matter of immigration.

For those who weren’t following events at the time of his trial, let’s go back and take look at what the issue was.

Jussi Halla-aho was charged with “incitement against an ethnic group” (that’s an approximate translation; the Finnish-language statute was modeled on the Swedish equivalent, hets mot folkgrupp).

According to the Baron, who followed the case closely back in 2009, Mr. Halla-aho’s so-called “hate speech” (make that rabid hate speech) was actually an attempt to demonstrate the double standard of the politically correct multicultural folks in charge. These gatekeepers, media included, forbid ethnic Finns from describing the reality of other groups within their borders. Meanwhile, it’s open season on the Finns themselves.

So here’s what Mr. Halla-aho did:

Step One: Abandon All Your Principles

Andrew Klavan weighs in on Terry Jones, Koran-burning, and the surrender of our fundamental rights:


Hat tip: CB3.

Camp of the Saints: A Strategy for Surrender

The initial burst of the current wave of migrations northwards across the Mediterranean began in January after an uprising in Tunisia forced the ouster of President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. In the wake of the fighting, refugees fleeing violence and destitution crossed the narrow straits between the Tunisian coast and the islands of Lampedusa, Malta, Pantelleria, and Sicily.

After the Egyptian crisis broke and the first unrest appeared in Libya, a more general flow of refugees began. Refugees moved both east and west, depending on the intensity of the fighting in a given location, and accumulated in refugee camps near the Egyptian-Libyan border or the Libyan-Tunisian border. The largest camps are in Tunisia just across the border from Libya, where hundreds of thousands of displaced persons are being held. Many of them are planning to cross the Mediterranean to what they hope will be a better life in Italy.

The first refugees were from Tunisia itself, but the latest waves originated in Libya. The migrants use Tunisia as a staging ground — conditions there are fairly good, since the camps are run mostly by Italian aid agencies — before continuing onwards to the Promised Land to the north. According to ANSAmed, nearly three thousand immigrants have been detained during the last few days in Tunisia after they crossed illegally from Libya. And those are just the ones who were caught — there’s no telling how many more made the crossing successfully and are now en route to the coast and the smugglers’ boats.


This is the background to the current emergency. Up until now the European establishment has tried to contain the crisis in Italy, with other nations of the EU — particularly France — insisting that despite the “borderless” nature of the Schengen Area, no migrants must cross the border from Italy into adjacent countries.

Over the last few weeks it has become obvious that this containment effort is unsustainable, and some other method of dealing with the migrants must be found. Representatives of the EU member states that border on the Mediterranean met yesterday in Nicosia to discuss their common problem. They made it clear that they expect help from the rest of the European Union:

(ANSAmed) — Nicosia, April 20 — The Mediterranean states of the EU have asked for more solidarity on behalf of the Union in addressing the disproportionate mass immigration flows caused by the dramatic developments in the Southern Mediterranean region.

In a joint communique they issued at the end of a meeting they held in Nicosia on Tuesday, as ANA reported, they state that current emergency situation with regards the massive illegal immigration flows and movements of possible beneficiaries of international protection brings upon the Mediterranean member states additional social, economic, administrative and demographic burden to that already prevailing.

Present at the Meeting were Cypriot Minister of the Interior Neoclis Sylikiotis, Greece’s Citizen Protection Minister Christos Papoutsis, Italian Under Secretary of State at the Ministry of the Interior Alfredo Mantovano, Minister of Justice and Home Affairs of Malta Carmelo Mifsud Bonnici, Spanish Director General for International Relations and Immigration Arturo Avello Diaz Del Corral, French Ambassador in Cyprus Jean Marc Rives, as well as other high ranking representatives from all the above states responsible for immigration issues.

In their joint communique they also emphasise that the possible prolongation of such influxes of illegal immigrants and asylum seekers to the Mediterranean member states, can not be managed without the concrete and substantial support and solidarity from the rest of the EU’s member states. In addition, the ministers reaffirm the urgent necessity for the EU to provide concrete and immediate support to member states on the EU southern external borders.

In his statements after the Meeting, the Cypriot Minister said that the EU Mediterranean states faced with disproportionate mass immigration flows should not and cannot be left alone in dealing with the challenges caused by the recent political developments in the region. He pointed out that the Nicosia Meeting is part of the initiatives undertaken by the Mediterranean EU states to strengthen their common positions within the EU.

It isn’t clear whether the following initiative from Brussels was announced before or after the Nicosia meeting, but there’s no doubt that European Commissioner for Home Affairs Cecilia Malmström and the other European commissioners were well aware of the sentiments expressed by the delegates in Cyprus yesterday.

What’s extraordinary about this latest response from the bureaucratic heart of the European Union is that it includes the declared intention of deliberately and pre-emptively importing the North African refugees into Europe.

That is, the Commission intends to surrender to the “Camp of the Saints” invasion before it is fully underway. According to ANSAmed:

The March of the Pigs

Many of you will remember last year’s invasion of a French halal fast food restaurant by dozens of Counterjihad insurgents wearing pig masks. A video of the event became an instant hit on YouTube.

The first anniversary of this historic occasion will be celebrated on May 14 with a “March of the Pigs” in Lyon. Many thanks to Bear for the translation, and to Vlad Tepes for subtitling the video announcement of this event:

Flaming Scorn Because We’re “Real White”

For some inscrutable reason the gods of the emails don’t send many hate-filled epistles our way.

[NB to said deities: we’re fine with that. Keep them not coming.]

Obviously one came this evening or I wouldn’t be telling y’all about it. This might be a real scorcher, if only I could understand it.

I yelled up to the Baron: “Hey, look at message #148. What is that person saying about your post?” After reading it, and looking at the passage the writer chose to denigrate, he denied all responsibility. “This person has snipped out something about Costa Rican coffee. What do I know about Costa Rican coffee? That must be your post.”

So I trudged upstairs in order that we could both examine this strange missive. The Baron opened the linked post — from 2006, for heaven’s sake! — and searched for the passage. Both of us were busy denying any foreknowledge of Costa Rica’s coffee…and as it turned out, we were both right. The ranter didn’t even bother with the Baron’s deathless prose in that post, but picked on a commenter’s remarks. Sheesh.

Here’s the post: For the Sake of the Children

Below is the Flaming Scorn (as the writer described it in the subject line) dished out to us via email. Gentle Readers, would y’all be so kind as to decode what this person is saying, and then you could tell us what in heaven’s name they’re on about? We’ve read the words several times now and it still doesn’t make sense. Perhaps the level of dudgeon attained by “Ariel” is so high that he or she was suffering from some kind of oxygen deprivation. Or maybe it’s simply too subtle for the likes of us umm… I mean if we’re “Really sadly despairingly horribly sadistically delusional….” people. Oh, and “quite viciously self-righteously destructive cruel…” Well, obviously we’re also too dim to grasp the finer points in the email.

Sorry. I know I shouldn’t make fun, but since neither the Baron nor I have a clue as to what this person is ranting about, those of you who get around more, those who actually know about esoterica like Costa Rican coffee, could do us a real favor and explain . Any part of it you care to decode is fine by us if it can throw a bit of light into this murk.

At the very least our interlocutor is suffering from adjective addiction. Whoowhee, boy!

This is truly a blast from the past. The comment that “Ariel” found so offensive wasn’t in the body of the post. Instead, it was left by one of my favorite people, El Jefe Maximo, who used to read us years ago — this post is almost five years old after all. El Jefe lives in the big city as I recall, so of course he would know all about coffee. As for us bumpkins, we get our coffee from the local grocery chain. The cheapest brand there is a dark espresso from Mexico, probably stocked, along with other Mexican foods, for any Hispanic immigrants in the area.

The email follows and I’ll ask questions as we go along [in square brackets]…


Hello

From the blog site in response to your entry dated Saturday, September 30, 2006:

Gates of Vienna News Feed 4/20/2011

The Missouri House of Representatives passed a bill today that bans the recognition of sharia law in state courts. The bill does not specify sharia or any national law, but refers merely to “foreign” law. The fate of a similar bill in the state senate is uncertain. Missouri Muslims criticized the law, and urged people to learn more about sharia before condemning it.

In other news, a Turkish-German TV actress named Sila Sahin has caused outrage among her fellow Muslims by posing nude for the German edition of Playboy. She says that she did it to set an example for other Muslim women and to help liberate them from the oppressive strictures of Islam.

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

Thanks to AC, C. Cantoni, Erick Stakelbeck, Fjordman, Freedom Fighter, Gaia, JP, Kitman, McR, Takuan Seiyo, and all the other tipsters who sent these in.

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

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

Camp of the Saints: Relocation

The island of Lampedusa, where most of the North African refugees arrive, is too small to hold more than a few thousand without grave overcrowding. The Italian government periodically empties the camps and relocates the culture enrichers to Sicily or the Italian mainland.

The first hijra for the migrants carries them to one of the islands, and the second to a larger and more permanent camp. The refugees do not stay long, however: they attempt a third hijra by escaping from the camps and heading for the French border and points beyond.

A thousand enrichers were evacuated from Lampedusa today and are headed for various destinations further north. According to AKI:

1,000 Migrants Evacuated From Lampedusa

Lampedusa, 20 April — (AKI) — One thousand migrants from North Africa set sail from Lampedusa island on Wednesday, headed for detention centres on nearby Sicily and the Italian mainland.

Most of the migrants are asylum-seekers who reached the tiny southernmost Italian island late on Tuesday aboard a fishing hulk after setting sail from the Libyan coast.

The Italian ferry ‘Flaminia’ will take some of the migrants to centres in the Sicilian port city of Catania, and Crotone and Bari, respectivly in Italy’s southern Calabria and Puglia regions.

Bad weather prevented other migrants landings on Lampedusa Wednesday, but 36 Tunisian migrants reached the Italian island of Pantelleria, which lies about 70 kilometres from the Tunisian coast. They had been abandoned at sea by the people smugglers and were due to be transferred to the western Sicilian coastal city of Trapani on Wednesday.

Italy’s foreign minister Franco Frattini said on Tuesday he suspected embattled Libyan strongman Muammar Gaddafi had allowed the people-smuggling boat to set sail on Tuesday from western Libyan port of Zuwarah.

Gaddafi may have decided to allow the people traffickers to operate in retaliation for international support for rebels who have for two months been trying to end his 42-year rule in Libya, Frattini claimed.

Freedom of Speech or Freedom of Religion?

Our Dutch correspondent H. Numan, who has been covering the Geert Wilders trial so lucidly for the last couple of weeks, contributes the following overview of the case and its larger ramifications.


Freedom of speech or freedom of religion?
by H. Numan

It seems that quite a few readers have lost track of what exactly is going on during the Wilders trial. The issue at stake is on what basis our society will come to rest: which is more important? Freedom of religion, or freedom of speech? Not just in The Netherlands, mind you. This trial has much broader consequences.

Let me start off by making it easy: freedom of speech does not mean you have the freedom to shout “FIRE!” in a cinema, for example. There is ample jurisprudence on that one. Freedom of speech has its limitations. You have the right to say what you feel about any religion, but you may have to clarify that in court. Again, there is ample jurisprudence about that topic as well.

There is a current trend, both in Europe as well as in the USA to give freedom of religion far more importance than it actually deserves. That is what is at stake. Currently, someone put an image of Jesus in glass of urine, as an art form. Utterly tasteless, I fully admit. But it falls completely under freedom of speech.

I understand that some (not even that many) Christians are offended. None of them is burning down art galleries, beheading artists, or killing other Christians to show their dislike. That is in stark contrast with mohammedanism, which would go completely berserk if an artist were to place a koran in a jar of urine. They’d happily kill any number of people, including their own, to show their fury. It doesn’t matter at all where the artist lives: be it Nova Zembla, Antarctica, or anywhere between.

This has already happened many times. Offend mohammedanism — anywhere on the world — and we will take revenge. Terry Jones burned a koran, in America. Which is well within his constitutional right to do. It was not (yet) possible to kill that infidel, so they went berserk in Afghanistan. Much easier to do there anyway. Not that easy to kill infidels, sadly. Most infidels in Afghanistan wear flak jackets and carry M16s. So they picked a few of those that don’t and a large number of mohammedans as well. About 24 people killed altogether, as I recall.

The reaction is Chamberlainian: We have to change our laws, in order to compel to their religious beliefs. That is the world on its head. But many politicians will happily appease themselves into dhimmitude. The Dutch government is doing that right now, actually. All for oil…

The Wilders case is far more complicated than that. Wilders is an elected parliamentarian. He cannot be prosecuted for his words outside parliament. But he can be prosecuted for his statements made in public outside parliament. And that is what happened.

That seems not unreasonable, until you read the charge, and see how this circus progresses. The DA did not want to prosecute, because he considered it an impossible case to win. The court had to order the DA to do so, which he then unwillingly did. His demand was release from prosecution. A DA can do that. Normally, the court would by then understand that the case is utterly hopeless and dismiss it.

However, this is a purely political trial. Make no mistake about that. The court did order the prosecution to proceed, and put Wilders on trial. Fortunately, Wilders is defended by the best lawyer in the country. The first trial was dismissed into a re-trial. Not unprecedented, admittedly. However, this particular outcome was absolutely unheard of. Certainly in a trial of this magnitude.

If you had watched the judges blunder along, the DA making a fool of himself and most important: if you had seen the complainants utterly misbehave and show their unprofessional hatred, you’d be disgusted. This was not a trial, this was being put on the stake. If the court had any decency, as one might expect from a court, it should have ordered all the complainants inadmissible.


One of the councillor-complainants was arrested the day after the trial for climbing over a fence into a military facility. The man is a professional hippie (with filthy hair and ponytail), but he’s pushing 60… He behaved exactly like that in court: as a hippie high as a kite on grass demanding that his (unreasonable) demands be met. Not professional at all. An angry fishmonger would have presented his case more clearly and less revoltingly. Another one already showed his blatant hatred for the entire legal system (in which he actually works) by appearing with a muslim headdress and refusing to remove it. (One is not allowed to wear funny hats in Dutch courts; only a magistrate has that privilege.)

So now we see the Wilders-show Part II: “The hanging continues”.

Dearborn Braces for Terry Jones

Terry Jones, the Koran-burning pastor of Dove World Outreach Center in Gainesville, Florida, is planning a little road trip. The day after tomorrow — Good Friday — he and some of his supporters plan to demonstrate in front of a mosque in Dearborn, Michigan. The City of Dearborn does not want Rev. Jones to come, and city officials are doing their best to get a court injunction to keep him away from the mosque.

In the news report below, you’ll see the mayor of Dearborn explain his take on the situation. The news announcer throws in her own two cents’ worth, commenting that the fact that the demonstrators will be armed shows a lack of peaceful intent. But if I had several hundred death fatwas outstanding against me, I’d probably be packing heat, too.

Many thanks to Vlad Tepes for YouTubing this video:

True Finns in the Crosshairs

Last Sunday the political map of Europe shifted significantly when the Perussuomalaiset, or the True Finns — the equivalent in Finland of the PVV in the Netherlands, Sverigedemokraterna in Sweden, Vlaams Belang in Flanders, and the FPÖ in Austria — gained 19% of the vote in national elections. All the other major parties lost seats, and the True Finns will join the next center-right coalition government.

Not only are the True Finns “xenophobes”, they are also Euro-skeptics, which means they are a double threat to the European establishment. Needless to say, knickers are twisting all over Europe in the wake of Sunday’s vote.

The BBC took it upon itself to do a bit of damage control. A piece entitled “True Finns’ Nationalism Colours Finland Election” retails the accepted “narrative” about the True Finns, and puts them where the establishment thinks they belong: in the same pigeonhole as “Nazis” and “fascists”.

Are we surprised? Here’s what the Beeb says:

The True Finns saw political potential among the neglected people in society. Their political message is two-fold: social-democratic welfare combined with nationalism and xenophobia.

Remember what the Beeb means by “xenophobia”: resistance to Multiculturalism, and the refusal to tolerate any more mass immigration from Third World countries.

In other words, by stigmatizing a perfectly normal, rational, and healthy human impulse — the desire to maintain and protect a relative cultural and ethnic homogeneity — the term “xenophobia” serves to disable the natural defenses of a people in the face of the depredations of forcibly imported aliens.

The impulse to preserve the nation — that’s what the Powers That Be really object to about the True Finns and their sister parties in other European countries.

They have targeted dissatisfied Finns who have suffered from the previous governments’ economic policies.

Notice that this statement is essentially the same as the arguments made by Barack Hussein Obama: people become “racist”, “bigoted”, and “xenophobic” because of economic pressures.

This assertion — which is never backed up by any hard evidence, because such evidence does not exist — denigrates the real sentiments involved, which are healthy and absolutely necessary for the survival of a people. Love of one’s country, pride in one’s language and customs, devotion to one’s extended family and local community: these are the traits which allow a people to survive and prosper.

And these are also the traits that are denigrated and derided by the dominant political culture, which insists that they be suppressed and eradicated.

Finnish politics has been stable for years because ruling coalitions have integrated and then diluted the radical parties of left and right.

In other words, “stability” — that which is to be desired above all else — depends on middle-of-the-road policies and compromises. The only problem with all of this is that the BBC is not really serious about diluting the power of the “radical parties of the left”. Only the most revolutionary Communists and Anarchists — and maybe not even those — would be considered beyond the pale.

The elite opinion-makers are really only concerned with suppressing the “right”, by which they mean any party that opposes Multiculturalism, mass immigration, and the erasure of national borders. Those are the Enemy, regardless of how progressive they are in their economic policies.

Parties tend to follow popular trends among the electorate, even if they have an authoritarian streak. That is a general weakness of democracy.

Another slur casually thrown into the mix: “authoritarian”. Wanting to maintain control of a country’s borders is “authoritarian”. Not importing immigrant barbarians is “authoritarian”. Insisting that newcomers learn the language and obey the law is “authoritarian”.

But forcing halal meat into the schools, prosecuting people for speaking out against Multiculturalism, and suppressing any discussion of these issues in a public forum — all of those are part of “tolerance”.

Read the first part of the following paragraph, and then notice the seamless progression leading to the final sentence:

[The True Finns] believe that a low birth rate is not solved by immigration, as that results in problems and foreigners do not fit into Finnish culture. Instead, young women should study less and spend more time giving birth to pure Finnish children. That is like a faint echo of Nazi ideology.

A low birth rate cannot be solved by immigration — seems obvious to me.

Women should study less and have more babies — hmm… Did the True Finns actually say that?

And the clincher: they’re Nazis! NAZIS!!!

There’s more to the BBC article, including a discussion of the Swedish minority in Finland and the economic crisis that is afflicting the entire EU.

If you want an alternative viewpoint from a patriotic Finn, consider this guest-essay by Vasarahammer at Tundra Tabloids. As KGS notes, the Finnish establishment and the BBC are singing from the same hymnal concerning the True Finns:

As the true winners in the recent parliamentary elections where they won 19.0% of the vote, the True Finns party looks to upset the EU’s apple cart where the continued bailout of economically challenged member states is concerned, and domestically, the continued elevated status of Swedish speakers in Finland and the enforced teaching of Swedish in school in an official bilingual state.

Enter professor Jan Sundberg, hand picked by the Finnish Foreign Minister, (and Swedish speaker) Alexander Stubb, to provide election analysis to the international media after the election results. He can be seen here, at the 26:30 mark actually daring to mention the Nazis in response to a statement about the True Finns not being a “right-wing” party by one of his colleagues on the panel answering the media.

Jan Sundberg not only disagreed with her, but then went on to state the following:

That’s very typical for right wing populists, they’re both (social welfare advocates and nationalists), that’s what you can see when you look around in Europe. Where do they get their votes? Yes, they got them from people who are quite badly off and that’s a very important thing, but then they have together a strong nationalism, that’s the combination, that’s very typical for these parties. I mean I could go back to say the Nazis in Germany, that’s exactly what they did. Oh they’re not Nazis in fact, I was just saying, we have lots of evidence, I’m saying that.

“Well, they’re not really Nazis, I didn’t really mean that. I was just saying…” Right. Uh-huh.

No establishment politician in Europe can utter a sentence about an anti-immigration party without invoking Godwin’s Law. Not a single sentence. It’s not possible. “Blah blah blah blah NAZI blah blah NAZI etc blah yak…”

Those are the only terms in which the discussion may be framed.

And now some excerpts from Vasarahammer’s essay:

True Finns smeared by handpicked professor from the Swedish minority

Finnish parliamentary elections are normally a minor affair in the international media. You may catch a couple of lines here and there but with no major headlines. However, this time was an exception since the True Finns party led by Timo Soini scored a big victory with 19 per cent of the vote and 39 seats in the parliament containing 200 seats in total. The 15 percentage point gain in the election was the biggest ever in Finnish electoral history.

Since few people outside Finland know what the party is like, it is relatively easy to spread misinformation and outright lies about the party. If you want to read a good an honest analysis about the reasons behind the rise of True Finns, please read blogger Ironmistress’s piece here. In that she tells why True Finns is not a good translation of the party name Perussuomalaiset, who represent regular average Finns who work to earn their money, pay taxes and normally do not upset anyone. She also tells why Finnish “Matti and Maija” i.e. Average Joe and Jane got fed up with the system and protested by turning to the True Finns party. The main issue that tested the patience of an average Finn was the following according to Ironmistress:

Stresses in the Peaceable Kingdom

The current Dutch government’s alliance with Geert Wilders and the PVV has not all been smooth sailing, at least not for the two parties that make up the governing coalition. Mr. Wilders’ statements about Mohammed have now landed the government in hot water with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

Here’s the story from De Telegraaf, as translated by our Dutch correspondent H. Numan. The article is followed by the translator’s commentary:

Trouble with the Saudis Because of Wilders

The Hague — The Dutch ambassador in Riyadh had to clarify for the Saudi authorities statements made by PVV leader Geert Wilders. This is reported by sources in The Hague. The Saudis are furious about the statements he made concerning the prophet Mohammed.

The politician wrote at the end of March in an article that the prophet Mohammed suffered from a ‘brain tumor’ which would give him delusions. Wilders wanted to start a debate about the true nature of the prophet and ‘unmask’ him at the same time.

That infuriated the Saudis, who demanded clarification from the Dutch government, as now seems evident. Ambassador Ron Strikker spoke about the affair with authorities in Riyadh. The [Dutch] Foreign Office wanted to avoid publicizing the affair.

Yesterday minister Verhagen (Economic Affairs) visited the Islamic kingdom. Amongst others, he spoke with his colleague Al-Naimi, who as minister controls the vast quantities of Saudi oil. The Wilders affair was not addresses, emphasized a spokesman.

Gates of Vienna News Feed 4/19/2011

Syria lifted its half-century old state of emergency as a gesture of reform, but the anti-regime demonstrators were not appeased. Police fired into a crowd of five thousand protesters in Homs, the country’s third-largest city. Two people were reported killed, an unknown number injured.

In other news, the English Defence League has vowed to encircle next week’s royal wedding with a “ring of steel” to prevent Islamic zealots from getting anywhere near Westminster Abbey and disrupting the event.

Meanwhile, a man in Italy who is legally blind and living on disability benefits was caught driving a car. He was stopped at a police checkpoint and signed for a fine for not having his license with him, not realizing that the police had improved their database capabilities and would catch him out.

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

Thanks to AC, Andy Bostom, C. Cantoni, Fjordman, Gaia, Insubria, JD, JP, KGS, Kitman, RE, RR, Steen, Takuan Seiyo, TB, Vlad Tepes, and all the other tipsters who sent these in.

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

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

Camp of the Saints: A Bigger Boat

There’s only one “Camp of the Saints” story today, but it’s an intriguing one: a boat carrying 760 culture enrichers was rescued by the Italian Coast Guard and brought to the island of Lampedusa. As far as I can recall, this is the greatest number of migrants to arrive in a single boat since the crisis began three months ago.

The Coast Guard must have been aware that the boat was overloaded — the refugee boats always are — and had assumed at first that there were about 300 passengers on board. It turned out to be more than twice as many — can you imagine what that boat must have looked like? I scoured the news for a photo of the thing, but couldn’t find one (the boat at the top of this post is just one of many file photos).

Here’s a brief account from AGI:

Boat Carrying 760 Migrants Docks in Lampedusa

Palermo — A boat carrying 760 migrants has docked in Lampedusa after being rescued 40 miles south of the island by Italian Coast Guard patrol boats and escorted to the port where it arrived a little after 2:30 p.m. Among the migrants there are dozens of women and children. It had previously been thought there were about 300 people on board, but once it had docked officials discovered that the old fishing boat was carrying more than double the number.

ANSA has a more detailed story, including the fact that pregnant women and children are among the arrivals, demonstrating that a full-scale cultural invasion really is underway:

Over 750 Refugees Land on Lampedusa, Italy Suspects Gaddafi

Pregnant women, children among migrants from Libya

Rome, April 19 — Italy said besieged Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi may be to blame for the arrival on a fishing boat of some 760 African refugees on the tiny southern Italian island of Lampedusa on Tuesday.

Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini told a House committee that he suspects Gaddafi may have decided to use people trafficking to hit back at international support for rebels trying to end his 40-year rule in Libya.

As regular readers know, this is exactly what has been discussed here for the last two months: Col. Moammer Ghadafi first threatened, then promised that he would unleash a flood of sub-Saharan Africans on Europe in revenge for NATO interference in the civil war.

The Italian government is finally acknowledging that this is exactly what is happening. Up until now Italy has been doing its best to contribute as little as possible to the war in Libya, trying to appease Col. Crocodile in hopes that he will eat Italy last.

All to no avail; the boats are coming, and Italy is their proximate destination.

The article continues: