For Just Pennies a Day

This post is being left on top for one more day — scroll down for newer material. I’ve got a new post about the Great Diebold Conspiracy which will be up momentarily.

In case anyone who donated in the past two days hasn’t received a note from us yet — we had at least one of our outgoing emails bounce. Send us an email and we’ll reply to you at that address.

This donation gig is kind of like fund-raising week on your local NPR station, when your favorite lefty political program is repeatedly interrupted by the local station announcers begging you to “call our toll-free number!”

The main difference (besides our politics, that is) is that we haven’t set a goal that we have to meet. We’ll just leave this up until we and/or you get tired of it.

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The initial response has been overwhelming — some of you are real optimists, and have paid for years of Gates of Vienna in advance! We’ll have to take our vitamins…

Thanks to everyone who has made the jar ring. You’ll all hear from us individually, in short order.


As some of you already know, I have been unemployed for five months now. I resigned my job in Richmond voluntarily and in good standing, after being at the same place for seven years.

Since Dymphna has now gone public on the issue, I can reveal that one of the main reasons I quit was so that I would no longer have to stay away from home all week and only come home on weekends. My wife is ill with fibromyalgia and needs me here, and I felt the need to be here. In addition, the long commute to Richmond and my prolonged absences from home were finally beginning to wear me down.

What I didn’t fully anticipate was how hard it is to find jobs in my field in the Charlottesville/Lynchburg area. I’m a computer programmer, but with a fairly narrow specialty. In the high-tech corridors around Reston or in the West End of Richmond there are plenty of jobs in my range. But it turns out that around here such jobs are few and far between.

The upside of the current situation is that I get to blog all the time, which has been great. In the last six months Gates of Vienna has really taken off, and I have been able to write what I want in the midst of my (so far futile) job hunt.

A number of our readers have been kind and donated to Gates of Vienna since we put in the tip cup. You know who you are, and I thank you!

And it occurred to me that, based on our current traffic, if every reader who really, really likes Gates of Vienna were to contribute a dollar a month to our tip jar, I could keep the job search going for a while longer without facing financial disaster.
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I’m not under any illusions — nobody can make a living by blogging. But I know a job opportunity will open up for me in good time, and I just want to keep my head above water until then.

So… If you decide to follow my dollar-a-month suggestion, you’ll probably want to lump several months together, since Paypal charges 30 cents per transaction, in addition to a small percentage. For efficiency’s sake, five or ten months’ worth at a time makes more sense.

Anyone who feels so inclined may use the tin cup down our left sidebar (Blogger won’t allow a “donate” form to be inserted into the post itself).

And, in any case, thank you all for your support. The email is overwhelmingly friendly, flaming is rare, and the trolls are few! Life doesn’t get any better than that…

Even after I get my job I will keep on posting here. Not as often, and maybe only on weekends, depending on the nature of my work. You’ll be hearing more from Dymphna, in that case.

Which I’m sure will suit some of our readers just fine… ;)

Europe, the Lend Lease Act, and Gratitude

In the comments on yesterday’s post, Rob Spear had this to say about Europe:

Americans absolutely should not do anything beyond giving support for the European nations undergoing this crisis. Part of the problem in Europe is a lack of national self-love caused by their liberation by the Americans from the Nazis. Europe would be a psychologically far healthier place if the Nazis had taken over, then been chucked out by resistance movements a generation or so later, after falling into decadence. The idea that your nation is so feeble it can only survive due to the benevolence of the kindly American super-power is not conducive to healthy patriotism.

Yorkshireminer offered this response (I have adjusted the punctuation and amended his typos; I hope he doesn’t mind):

I think it is about time I debunked a few myths. I am an amateur historian, somewhat of an obsession of mine. I have no formal qualifications; I do not need them, nor even want them.

I left school on my 15th birthday and went to work down the coal mines in Yorkshire the following Monday. I can’t let a day go by without having to read. Nearly fifty years later I have my own library — a somewhat pretentious word. I have my own room filled with my books, a good comfortable chair, a stool to plonk my feet on, a good reading lamp, and a small side table where occasionally reposes a cut glass whiskey glass full to the top with a good single Scottish Malt Whiskey.

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Some Americans seem to be under the delusion that they paid for all the war, not only materially but also in blood, and the rest of us Europeans should be grateful. As an Englishman, when I put all the facts in the balance, I take my hat off to you, and say thank you, America; without you we couldn’t have won the war. I say it also with a sense of deep affection for your country, but let us look at the facts. When we the British stood with our backs to the wall after the evacuation of Dunkirk in 1940 we had only the R.A.F. and a somewhat antiquated navy to defend ourselves with. Everything that we needed for our defence that we couldn’t produce ourselves had to be paid for in cash.

When the war started we transferred all our gold reserves to the Sun Assurance building in Canada. We used this gold to pay for our imports until these ran out, and when these ran out we had to liquidise all the assets the British had accumulated in America. These, by the way, were sold off at fire-sale prices — it was a buyers’ market; we were so desperate. The Americans even checked that we were not hiding anything from them — they even insisted that the last £50,000,000 in gold be transferred to America in a British Battleship from Cape Town when we were fighting for our lives, and needed every ship we had.

Have you ever wondered why America had such a large percentage of the world’s gold reserves sitting in fort Knox after the war? Now you know.

When we were literally bankrupt, the Lend Lease Act was passed. It wasn’t as most American think, a one-way street, that America paid the bill and the rest of the world got a free ride. It was certainly a two-way street for the British. While America provided £13,500,000,000 in lend lease the British provided £4,500,000,000. While in absolute terms America paid more, in relative terms the British paid the lion’s share. 1% of America’s gross national product was dedicated exclusively to lend lease; 15% of the British gross national product was devoted to lend lease, and the economy was distorted accordingly.

Another thing Americans should know is that machine tools were explicitly exempt in the Lend Lease Act. It was impossible for the British economy to modernise during the war. The capital stock of Britain was being degraded by bombs and overuse, and it was to cost Britain dearly — and also America — when the British economy collapsed during the winter of 1947, and America had to take over the obligations to certain countries in the Middle East.

Have you ever wondered why the British got out of Palestine so quickly in 1948? Now you know. Another fact you might like to know: when Marshall aid was offered to Europe, the goods bought had to be shipped in American ships, shipping that had been allocated to America to produce under the Lend Lease Act. It could just have well been allocated to Britain but it wasn’t. The British lost out there, when we needed as much foreign currency we could get to pay for the loan we had contracted with America to pay our way after they arbitrarily cut off lend lease after VJ day.

After the war Lord Keynes (if you don’t know who he was, google him) made an account of who had paid what and to whom during the war. It turns out that among the Allies Britain had paid 53%, while America had paid 47% of the total costs .

Rob, you might think that after this I am a rabid anti-American, but I am not. The reasons are twofold: while I might disagree what America does, I always feel that they are done for the right reason; there is a sense of common decency behind their motives; they might get it wrong but it is done for the right reasons.

The other reason is purely emotional: I was born in the middle of that bloody conflict and most of the male members of my family were up at the sharp end. My uncle died the night I was born flying Lancaster bombers over Germany, and another died at Anzio. We had very little and I remember very little of what was going on.

I have two distinct memories: one is the soldiers from our village coming back, and we had a parade. The other is my Mum receiving bottles of cod liver oil and concentrated orange juice. The cod liver oil was a gift from Canada, for which I am eternally grateful, the concentrated orange juice a gift from Florida. Can you imagine what it is like to be bribed with a teaspoon of concentrated Florida orange juice, when you are four or five, after you have ingested a teaspoon of cod liver oil, when the only fruit you have ever seen or tasted has been perhaps an apple or a pear?

For that pure transitory experience I will always be in America’s debt. I say thank you, America. But, Rob, please don’t get up and crow.

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In Rob Spear’s defense: I doubt that he was thinking about the British when he made his comment. France is more likely what came to mind, with its quick surrender, its collaboration under Vichy, and its notorious ingratitude under de Gaulle after the war.

But I can understand what Yorkshireminer is talking about. When I was in Yorkshire, twenty years after the time he describes, Britain was still depleted and austere from the effects of the war.

Everyone was so much poorer than what I was used to. Even middle-class respectable people had to get by on a tenth of what I, as a pampered and privileged post-war Yank baby-boomer, took for granted.

As I studied British history in a British grammar school, I learned the same things that Yorkshireminer is describing. British wartime leaders knew what they were giving up by choosing to fight the Axis. They could have made a sweet deal with Hitler and consigned the rest of Europe to take its chances under the jackboot.

Instead, Churchill (and Chamberlain, too) chose to do what was right, to do the only decent and honorable thing that could be done under the circumstances. They realized what was at stake, that Britain was likely to be destroyed economically, and that the Empire would have to be relinquished, but they did it anyway.

For that they deserve the gratitude, not just of America, but of the entire free world. For all practical purposes, the United States inherited the British Empire. And, despite the humiliation of living under the evil hegemony of American corporate capitalism, few people would prefer to pledge allegiance to the heirs of Hitler, Mussolini, and Tojo (not to mention Stalin).

Britain gave us the Anglosphere, which is all that stands between civilization and the murderous barbarism of the Great Islamic Jihad.

There are many arguments British and Americans can get into, and many bones we have to pick with one another. But it behooves all who claim English as a native language to remember that we began all this together, and we are in it together still.

And from this are our lives writ large
From the beach at Dunkirk
To Pickett’s Charge
And it’s hard to go back
After coming this far
Down the road

      —Al Stewart, from “Three Mules”

Want To See The Words to the French National Anthem?

I present, for your moral edification, and to contribute to the breadth of your learning, the words to the French national anthem.

Make of them what you will.

La Marseillaise

Let’s go children of the fatherland,
The day of glory has arrived!
Against us tyranny’s
Bloody flag is raised! (repeat)
In the countryside, do you hear
The roaring of these fierce soldiers?
They come right to our arms
To slit the throats of our sons, our friends!
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Refrain
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Grab your weapons, citizens!
Form your batallions!
Let us march! Let us march!
May impure blood
Water our fields!
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Refrain
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This horde of slaves, traitors, plotting kings,
What do they want?
For whom these vile shackles,
These long-prepared irons? (repeat)
Frenchmen, for us, oh! what an insult!
What emotions that must excite!
It is us that they dare to consider
Returning to ancient slavery!
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Refrain
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What! These foreign troops
Would make laws in our home!
What! These mercenary phalanxes
Would bring down our proud warriors! (repeat)
Good Lord! By chained hands
Our brows would bend beneath the yoke!
Vile despots would become
The masters of our fate!
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Refrain
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Tremble, tyrants! and you, traitors,
The disgrace of all groups,
Tremble! Your parricidal plans
Will finally pay the price! (repeat)
Everyone is a soldier to fight you,
If they fall, our young heros,
France will make more,
Ready to battle you!
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Refrain
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Frenchmen, as magnanimous warriors,
Bear or hold back your blows!
Spare these sad victims,
Regretfully arming against us. (repeat)
But not these bloodthirsty despots,
But not these accomplices of Bouillé,
All of these animals who, without pity,
Tear their mother’s breast to pieces!
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Refrain
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Sacred love of France,
Lead, support our avenging arms!
Liberty, beloved Liberty,
Fight with your defenders! (repeat)
Under our flags, let victory
Hasten to your manly tones!
May your dying enemies
See your triumph and our glory!
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Refrain
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We will enter the pit
When our elders are no longer there;
There, we will find their dust
And the traces of their virtues. (repeat)
Much less eager to outlive them
Than to share their casket,
We will have the sublime pride
Of avenging them or following them!
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Refrain


Hat tip: Commenter eatyourbeans.

Blame it on Diebold

Do you all remember the aftermath of the 2000 election? Five years ago, after the Great Hanging Chad Crisis in Florida, Diebold and the magic of technology were going to save the American electoral system. Well, that was then, and this is now.

It seems there’s a bipartisan effort being mobilized to demonize the Diebold company and its electronic voting machines. The conspiracy-mongers are more numerous and more wild-eyed on the Democrat side, but both parties are definitely contributing to the mania.

My good friend Wally Ballou emailed me this morning:

Have you noticed that the left is busy preparing its excuse/legal strategy in case they don’t win big Tuesday? The new villain is the Diebold voting machine company, which is “known” to be dominated by “religious right-wing wackos”, and which already electronically stole the vote in Ohio and Florida in 2004.

Look for this news to bubble up on November 6, regardless of the outcome, but especially if they don’t take the House.

Try Googling “diebold” and see what comes up. Better yet, “diebold republican” or “diebold conspiracy”

HBO got their licks in with a breathless documentary called “Hacking Democracy”.

It’s all part of the movement to permanently subordinate election results to the review and decision of the courts. How’s that for democracy?

And it all started because of the dimples and hanging chads in 2000. Congress decided to federalize all electoral procedures and mandate electronic voting. Seemed like a good idea at the time (to them). Now all the dems who voted for it are calling it a plot (hey, just like the war).

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I took Wally’s advice and did some Googling, and, boy, is he right! You can Google just on “diebold”, and then scroll and click for the rest of your life, browsing through all the moonbat sites.

Just to pick one example, you can visit Rolling Stone and read Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s article, “Will The Next Election Be Hacked?”. Want to guess what his answer is?

At the eye of the biggest conspiracy hurricane stands Diebold’s former chairman, Wally O’Dell. Back in 2003, at a fundraising dinner for President Bush, Mr. O’Dell — not realizing what forces he was unleashing in the nutroots — said that his highest priority was to deliver the state of Ohio to the Republicans.

And so the wacko Left is ready to contest any and every contest where their candidates lose, as long as a Diebold voting machine is involved.

But they aren’t the only ones ready to jump on Diebold. Here’s Mike Himowitz, writing in The Baltimore Sun about the upcoming election in Maryland:

Consider that at least 175,000 Maryland voters have asked for absentee ballots this year—an all-time high. In fact, their number represents about 10 percent of the votes cast in the 2002 gubernatorial election—certainly enough to turn even a relatively close contest into a cliffhanger.

There are a couple of reasons for the absentee boom. One is convenience. This is the first year voters can cast absentee ballots on demand, as opposed to certifying that they have a good reason, such as being incapacitated or out of town on Election Day.

But most of this year’s absentees were recruited by [Republican] Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr., who decided he didn’t trust the Diebold electronic voting system he personally approved just a few years ago. Or maybe he doesn’t trust the State Board of Elections, a majority of whom he appointed.

Paranoid this may be, but it’s paranoia well taken.

The Diebold AccuVote TS system—the electronic terminals that you and I are spending $106 million to install in every nook and cranny of the state—is inherently flawed because the results can’t be verified. Like similar voting systems from other manufacturers, it’s a classic “black box” that counts votes using secret, proprietary software.

In case of a dispute (and this election is likely to produce a big one), there’s no way to verify the results.

There’s no way to verify the results.

There’s the rub. If you are on the losing end of an election, and your margin of loss was, say, 321 votes out of 500,000, what can you do? No real recount is possible — all the numbers can dumped off all the Diebold hard drives one more time, but that won’t change anything. There are no punch cards, no ballots, no nothing, not even any chads to hang — just some binary numbers on magnetic media. Nothing further can be determined.

So what do you do? Concede the election, shake your opponent’s hand, and retire to obscurity? Or do you pay a fat retainer to your favorite hotshot legal firm and start filing lawsuits in state and federal court?

That’s why I objected to electronic voting in the first place; it was easy to see that it would come to this. Any computer programmer can tell you how simple it is to game an automated system, and how hard the results are to detect. All it takes is enough administrative cover from above. Just suborn a couple of people in management, who in turn will suborn a couple of programmers to hack the system, and you’ve got it made.

Electronic voting effectively enables the automation of fraud. It’s cheaper, quicker, and easier than getting names off tombstones or busing winos around the city to vote in six different precincts each.

And electoral fraud has always been a bipartisan affair. In recent years the Democrats seem to have taken the lead in it, but that may be simply because they control most of the local government patronage in the big metropolitan areas, where government is the most corrupt and fraud is the easiest to engineer.

Is the fear of the Great Diebold Conspiracy at least partially projection, then? Are the Democrats afraid of losing their accustomed edge in the voter fraud contest?

In any case, this issue could kill the electoral process beyond the point of resuscitation. Once the “stolen election theme” has been pounded on sufficiently in the compliant organs of the MSM, once the “count every vote” mantra has been repeated often enough… With no possibility of a recount, public confidence in the electoral process will evaporate, and elections then become meaningless. The universal franchise will be replaced by the rule of the judiciary.

On that gloomy note, I will leave you with this final thought from Wally (Ballou, not O’Dell):

They used electronic voting machines from the Smartmatic company in Venezuela. The Florida-based company is partly owned by the Venezuelan government. Smartmatic owns Sequiya, whose voting machines are used in the US.

And look who last won an election in Venezuela…


I misquoted Wally Ballou (or miscopied his email, or something). I have corrected it. Thanks, Wally.

The Situation in Malmö

While browsing Snaphanen early this morning I came across a YouTube video about Malmö called “Welcome to the New Sweden”. Even though Snaphanen is mostly in Danish, the video seems to be from Swedish TV. But, fortunately for us monoglots, the main part of the video was from Fox News, in English with Swedish subtitles.

What’s frustrating is that sometime in the interim YouTube has gone down, so readers will be unable to see the video until the site is repaired. Fortunately I transcribed parts of the video and took screen-caps while it was still available. The embedded YouTube link is below the jump, and I hope it’s working by the time you read this.

The video focuses on the enormous influx of Muslim immigrants into Malmö, and the effect that it is having on Swedish society in general. Most of the immigrants are young, and come from various parts of the Muslim world — Iraq, Iran, Somalia, etc. Many are illiterate when they arrive, speak no Swedish, and have difficulty acculturating to a completely alien society.

The unspoken subtext, of course, is that Sweden doesn’t really require them to acculturate.

The Fox interviewer spoke to a civil servant in Malmö:

Q: You have a thousand students in a Swedish school?
A: Yeah.
Q: How many are Swedish?
A: Two.

Just 0.2% of the school’s students are “persons of Swedish background”! Many of them have to be taught through interpreters, and most of them never complete school.

Another civil servant says:

They are not part of the Swedish society, so to speak. It is difficult for them to get into the society.

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The video contains footage of riots and disturbances among the “youths” in the immigrant parts of the city. According to the narrator, when trouble happens in certain districts, the personnel in arriving ambulances are intimidated by the “youths”, and are told whom they may carry to the hospital, and who must be left behind.

Earlier this year a mosque was set ablaze — whether by angry Swedes or the immigrants themselves is not made clear — and, when the firemen arrived, the violent mob refused to allow them to put out the fire.

In previous discussions here about Malmö, we had at least one Swedish commenter who asserted that there are no problems in the city. He offered to give visitors a tour to prove to them that they can go anywhere, that Malmö is a normal city.

Well, which is it? Are the scenes in this video anomalies? Were they rare occurrences, unrepresentative of the “normal” Malmö? Were they staged by the Fox News crew?

How can 99.8% of the student body at a school be made up of immigrants with a different language and religion, and not affect the culture at large?

When large swathes of Swedish metropolitan areas are, de facto, no longer Sweden, what becomes of the Swedes?

Since it is official government policy to permit or even encourage this situation, to whom can the average Swede turn?

I have nothing but questions; no answers. Maybe some of our Swedish and Danish readers can offer their own opinions about what is to come.


Hat tip for additional information: LN.

A Stale Question: What Will It Take for the French to Rebel?

The Augean Stables has a good summary of the latest lawlessness in France. This one doesn’t involve arson, though it is another attack on public transportation.

The deprived youths seem to have a thing for modes of transportation — and with good reason. What better way to make large numbers of people feel unsafe?

First it was the cars… actually, they’re still burning those in astonishing numbers; they’ve merely added to their repertoire by attacking busses with gasoline — remember the hideous burning of the young woman in Marseille? And now, a third theatre of the battle: they have expanded their strategic vision of Hell for France, and have begun hitting the subways in Paris.

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This last incursion doesn’t entail burning or blowing them up, however. This is about robbery and humiliation: purses, cell phones, money, MP3s, laptops — all the accoutrements of the average Parisienne traveling to or from work.

Needless to say, the French MSM has nothing to report. Augean Stables notes one paper, the Parisien, which has an article on it (and from which the image here was taken). Evidently this paper is often willing to report on news which the larger gatekeepers pretend doesn’t exist — at least until the situation is too big to ignore any longer. AS put up the link to a scan of the report here, as well as some analysis about the effects of these random acts of violence on the average citizen:

This incident, which had people fleeing the subway in panic, and the police closed off the station to arrest the youth is not unprecedented. Last spring, just before the riots — in the daytime — passengers were jumped and relieved of their goods. Said one:

“They took my laptop and I didn’t move. I just tried to hide my bag,” said Thierry. “We went through ten minutes when we felt as insignificant as a straw in the wind.”

And that’s just what you were supposed to feel. You’ve been humiliated. And you took it lying down. Double victory for them.

And that double victory is then turned into a triple victory when the French MSM avoid any mention of the incident. Thus the French slowly but surely let some of the Metro stops and lines become “lost territories,” taken over by gangs whose information network is excellent, and the losers don’t even know it’s happening.

Why no report? Because it’s too embarrassing? Because if the tourists knew they wouldn’t come? Because if the French knew, they’d vote “right wing”? All apparently compelling reasons for the French MSM; all very bad reasons for the future of the French Republic.

All good questions. Perhaps it’s the third possibility: because if the citizenry at large knew what was going on, Chirac would be history. And the compulsion to hold on to power appears to be stronger than the desire to protect one’s country.

Countries, like people, have characters, or at least characteristics. Someone described France as “a nation of solidarity”. I don’t think it is any more. France has become deaf, dumb and blind to its own demise. In a way, this is fitting retribution, for it is the French elites — all the way back to dear de Gaulle — who deliberately, with malice aforethought, planned the Muslimification of Europe.

And why would any sane nation do such a thing? Sheer envy. France thought it could quell the rising power of America, whom it deeply resented for... for being so atrociously American — that is, powerful, rich and so carelessly its bumpkin self. Now the urban French are forced to pay for this hubris on the part of their leaders. They wallow in daily fear and humiliation as the hatred of the depraved youths rampages through the cities of France, destroying public order for the simple pleasure of creating anarchy and experiencing briefly, the illusion of power.

Europeans have a different mindset than Americans when it comes to who is responsible for public order. The former hamstring their officers of the peace, giving them rubber bullets to face off crowds of murderous bullies. Such bureaucratic thinking is foreign in the extreme to the average American.

We sometimes go the other extreme, giving our SWAT teams too much leeway, and on occasion innocent people are hurt by these proto-military keepers of the peace. On the other hand, the French police are not known for their gentle ways, and are less answerable for their actions than our police officers. So it’s not a simple equation.

One thing is sure, however. The limits to which the MSM will go to hide these atrocities makes them part of the Islamification of their countries. The elites are not French, they are transnationals. As long as they are in charge of the larger picture, the youths are free to continue their rampages. After all, who rides in subways and busses? Not Chirac or his minions, that’s for certain.

But wait until they start coming for the chauffeur-driven limousines. Then it will be another story. An indignant, outraged story that will indeed be above the fold in the French newspapers.

Meanwhile, the youthful barbarians continue their softening up of the average citizen. There’s nothing like random violence and humiliation to leave you with a sense of permanent helplessness and make you more likely to accept further victimization.

What will be the breaking point? What could make the French people rise up and stand together?

Or is it already too late?


Hat tip: François

Update: Even before Mystery Meat pointed it out (via email), the Baron corrected my mischaracterization of the French. Whoops. It is now more appropriate!

The Mills of God

UPDATE (from Dymphna): Uh oh. Some of our pessimists may be right.

Saddam could get out of the noose through some kind of loophole. See the links at “Rope. Bridge. Saddam. Some Assembly Required.”


An Iraqi court has sentenced Saddam Hussein to death.

Not by being lowered feet-first into a wood-chipper.

Not by inhaling mustard gas.

Not by being raped repeatedly in front of his family and then having his throat cut.

Not by being stabbed, shot, and having his genitals cut off and put in his mouth.

Not even by being machine-gunned from a helicopter and then bulldozed into a mass grave.

No, Saddam will simply be hanged by the neck until dead.
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The old suspensus per collum. Some will consider that insufficient justice; others will be satisfied.

Will there be a candlelight vigil the night before his execution, organized by Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, the ACLU, etc., etc.? Will George Galloway kneel, weeping, by the gibbet? Expect to see Episcopal priests marching up and down in front of the prison, holding signs that say “SAVE SADDAM!”

I have no idea what effect Saddam’s execution will have on internal Iraqi politics, whether it will damp down the Sunni insurgency or encourage it.

But I’ve never seen a man who deserved the noose more.

Who Shot Yitzhak Rabin?

Update: I recognized when I put up this post that it would be controversial, to say the least. In response to various commenters, in order to explain my attitude towards the issue more fully, I said this:

I agree; this is a wild theory. That’s why I put it here along with a whole shaker full of salt.

But Carl (who is not a nut-case at all) raises a contradiction that cannot be resolved without an explanation that goes beyond the official one: If Rabin was shot in the back, then how to account for the clearly-sourced references to his being shot in the chest?

Maybe the doctors involved misspoke themselves or made some kind of mistake. Maybe there is some other kind of reasonable explanation.

But some kind of explanation definitely needs to be found.

On November 4, 1995 (eleven years ago today if you’re reading this in Israel), Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated. A young man named Yigal Amir was convicted of the crime and sentenced to life in prison plus eight years.

Mr. Amir has been characterized as a right-wing extremist who was unhappy with Mr. Rabin’s part in the Oslo accords and his dealings with the PLO. According to the prevalent theory, the conspiracy to kill the Prime Minister — of which Amir was simply the triggerman — wanted to put a stop to the Oslo process.

In the years since the assassination, various conspiracy theories have swirled around the incident, claiming that Amir was not in fact the assassin, and positing various alternative scenarios involving nefarious government functionaries, and probably the Illuminati, for all I know.

But Carl in Jerusalem has recently outlined a coherent theory of what might have happened, a version that explains all the anomalous facts. I had hesitated to post about it, since he was relying on a single source, his friend “Dr. Josh”.

However, today Carl has collected other odds and ends of evidence, mostly videos in Hebrew, that illustrate the yawning gaps between the official version of events as recorded at Mr. Amir’s trial, and the evidence from other sources.
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The main problems with the official version are twofold:

1.		According to the trial record and as shown in the video of the assassination, Yitzhak Rabin was shot in the back. Yet there are at least two accounts, plus Dr. Josh’s report on the official autopsy evidence, which state that Mr. Rabin was shot in the chest.
2.		The assassination occurred within a 90-second drive from the nearest hospital. Yet it took 22 minutes form Mr. Rabin’s aides to get him in the car and arrive at the hospital, by which time the Prime Minister was dead.

Here’s what Carl has to say:

Notice in the video that Rabin is shot in the back. Now (with apologies to those without sufficient Hebrew to understand this), watch an interview with Dr. Barabash, who was then the director of Ichilov Hospital (I believe that today he’s the managing director of the Ministry of Health) — where Rabin finally arrived 22 minutes after he was shot at a place that is 90 seconds (tops) from the hospital by car. Note that Dr. Barabash says specifically that Rabin was shot in the chest.

Now, last but not least, we have Dr. Ephraim Sneh, the current Deputy Defense Minister and then the Minister of Health, being interviewed as he leaves the hospital on the night of the assassination. Note that he too says that Rabin was shot in the chest.

But you will all recall that two screens ago you saw Amir shoot Rabin in the back! And that, my friends, is one reason why none of this makes any sense. Now, go back and read my friend Dr. Josh’s explanation, the historical context for what happened, and the fact that the government will not even let Amir see Rabin’s x-rays (and believe me — the suppression of evidence during the ‘trial’ was much worse).

This is an outline of the most plausible (and least outlandish) theory of what really happened.

The Rabin government was facing trouble in the upcoming election, due to the unpopularity of the Oslo Accords. To prop up the popularity of the Prime Minister, certain of his subordinates concocted a bizarre plan: they recruited a sympathetic contact, Yigal Amir, to pretend to make an assassination attempt on the Prime Minister using a gun loaded with blanks.

The idea was that Mr. Rabin would miraculously escape assassination, public opinion would rally to him in sympathy, and the elections would go well for him and his party, and for the “peace process”.

What the conspirators were unaware of is that blanks fired at close range can seriously harm a person, especially if he has a history of medical trouble. The firing of the blanks induced a coronary (or something similar) in Mr. Rabin, and when his aides got him into the car, he was dead or dying. Realizing that they were in deep trouble, they took a detour on the way to the hospital, arranged to have Mr. Rabin shot, to make the assassination narrative credible, and later conspired to destroy or hide evidence that would expose their botched plan.

But they made the mistake of shooting him in the back, and that unhinged their whole scheme.

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This is a pretty wild conspiracy theory, and readers are welcome to take with as many grains of salt as necessary. Maybe a whole shaker.

But make sure you go over to Israel Matzav and read the whole thing. Follow the links, and watch the videos. Find someone who understands Hebrew to help you, if you can.

Carl, being an Orthodox Jew and a conservative Israeli, has a vested interest in seeing Yigal Amir exonerated. But his account conforms to Occam’s Razor: it does not multiply entities needlessly.

It’s worth investigation.

The True Believers

The conventional wisdom on the Left lumps all conservatives together with the Christian Right, and disregards the many secular libertarians and conservative atheists like Bill Quick. Never mind anyone who doesn’t fit the mold — we know they’re all Christer wackos, waiting for the Rapture while their ZioNazi puppeteers in Tel Aviv pull the strings.

And so there is an equivalence between the Islamic radicals and Christian conservatives. The Islamists have the Koran; the Christians have the Bible. The Muslims long for the Caliphate; conservatives are looking forward to an American-ruled Christian imperium.

The Shiites wait for the Twelfth Imam to return from the bottom of a well; the evangelicals look for Christ to return to Earth on a cloud. Same thing.

The shahids blow up women and children on buses; the disciples of Christ shoot abortion doctors. Same thing.

Each group has its martyrs. Both groups demean and oppress women. Both groups fervently espouse life-destroying doctrines without regard for others.

Theocons or mullahs — really, what is there to choose between the two camps?
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Liberals are above religion. They have outgrown the opiate of the people.

But the “Psychological Left”, as Gagdad Bob calls it, does not have the capacity for self-reflection. Its beliefs are based on feelings, on emotions. Dialogue within the fold is rare. Dialogue between the fold and the outside world is non-existent.

The Left is currently in a tacit alliance with radical Islam, which is not surprising, considering the resemblance between leftist thought and the dogma of religion. A few characteristics to compare:

• Apostasy. Islam punishes apostasy with death. The Left is extremely harsh on its own apostates. Look at Joe Lieberman — excommunicated for the deadly sin of supporting our national security. Or Larry Summers, who had his manhood surgically removed, and in the end still lost his job.
  
  Deviating from the party line can get you a death threat, or the details of your sex life posted on the internet.
  
  
• The inerrancy of scripture. The Koran is perfect, dictated by Allah, and can never be questioned.
  
  And neither can The Silent Spring. Forty years after Rachel Carson wrote it, the science behind the book is discredited, but not on the Eco-Left. Millions of people who lack DDT must die every year for the sake of the infallible Word.
  
  Erlich and Gore, as the Green Isaiah and the Eco-Jeremiah, transmit the pronouncements of God Gaia to us mere mortals.
  
  
• Heresy. Woe unto the man who would deny Global Warming! Or assert that free markets help people more than government programs. Or doubt the innocence of Alger Hiss. Or question the fact that America is an evil empire, the oppressor of the world. Or…
  
  
• The wages of sin. Violate Islamic law, and you might lose a finger, or a hand, or your head. Violate the Law of the Left, and you are sent to a re-education camp.
  
  Nowadays it’s more likely to be called a Diversity Workshop or Sensitivity Training, but, in any case, that’s where you’ll get your mind right.
  
  
• The indoctrination of the young. The old Jesuit motto says, “Give me a child until he is seven and I will give you the man.” But the Left likes to get them earlier and keep them longer than the Jesuits did.
  
  Heather has two Mommies. Girls rule!
  
  The Cookie Monster has had his cookie taken away — all those sinful sugars and transfats!
  
  No more games of tag or dodgeball. No games where anyone wins or loses.
  
  And above all — no toy guns, boys! That’s a sin!
  
  
• Orthodoxy. Doctrine trumps reality.
  
  The oil is running out. We’re doomed by the population explosion.
  
  Remember the Club of Rome? As of fifteen years ago, we were all dead.
  
  The Left, like the Church of Rome, will take centuries to admit error. If a modern Galileo wants to mutter eppure si muove, he’d better do it very, very quietly…

Christians have God and Jesus, Muslims have Allah and Mohammed, and Leftists have… well, nothing, really, except the nebulous feeling that they’re right and we’re wrong. If there were a Hell, you and I would be sure to burn in it for all our sins against Socialist Truth.

But that’s the big difference between the Left and Islam. A shahid is willing, even eager, to die for Allah. But a lefty, having neither deity nor afterlife to look forward to, is unwilling to die for anything. Heck, he’s not even willing to face major discomfort. He’s willing to pitch a traffic cone through the plate glass at Starbucks occasionally, and maybe pose for a mug shot from time to time. But threaten to take away his latte or his yoga classes, and he’ll fall right into line.

So… when the unnatural alliance between the Dingbat Left and the Great Jihad finally unravels, who do you think will be holding the trump card?

Watcher’s Council Results for October 20th

Well, I’m late, as usual…

The Council winner on October 20th was Shrinkwrapped, with a superb post called Trauma, Passivity, & the Fear of Aggression. A snip:

When people are traumatized, their ability to cope is temporarily overwhelmed by both external and internal forces. The external forces are obvious. Someone pointing a gun at you and your friends and loved ones is likely to evoke terror, often paralyzing terror. However, the internal reaction is what takes the terror and makes it traumatic. The combination of terror and impotent rage is a particular combination guaranteed to destabilize a person’s ability to cope. Often, in emergencies, taking action, even if it in retrospect is not the best possible course of events, is almost always less traumatizing than doing nothing (ie, remaining passive.) Passivity is the stance of a dependent child, not an active agent who may not be able to control a frightening environment but at least can have some control over his internal environment and his own behavior.

Right Wing Nut House came in second with a very moving piece, No Greater Love, about the recent death of Petty Officer 2nd Class Michael Monsoor in Iraq:

Garden Grove, California is a “stiller town” today. The city of 166,000 lost one of its favorite sons on September 29 when Petty Officer 2nd Class Michael A. Monsoor, a Navy SEAL, performed one of those acts of selfless courage that defines the term heroism.

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Go over to Rick’s place and read the rest.

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Of the Non-Council side, Daveed Gartenstein-Ross of the The Weekly Standard came in first with a piece about radical Islamic indoctrination calle “Prison Jihad?”:

The Wahhabi/Salafi translation of the Koran was not the only piece of radical literature Al Haramain distributed to prisons. Another widely-distributed volume was Muhammad bin Jamil Zino’s Islamic Guidelines for Individual and Social Reform. Like the radical translation of the Koran, one of the themes in Zino’s book was jihad. Zino instructs his readers that children should be indoctrinated in the glories of jihad from an early age:

Teach your children the love of justice and revenge from the unjust like the Jews and the tyrants. Consequently our youth would know that Palestine should be freed and Jerusalem must be of the Muslims. They have to learn about Islam and Jihad as per the Qur’an and that the holy fighting for justice is supported by Allah the Almighty.

Second place went to Villainous Company with What It Means To Be a Conservative. My favorite quote:

Our fellow humans prey on the helpless and on children and liberals (in addition to championing some very valuable causes) have also championed some pretty worthless causes like the freedom to view child pornography (which is illegal) and the freedom of ten year old girls to get abortions without their parents finding out. Personally I am not convinced a ten year old girl really needs the freedom to have sex with pedophiles. She is not a “woman” yet, so it is neither a “woman’s right to choose” nor a “woman’s sexual privacy” that is at issue. But apparently this shocking opinion makes me some sort of snake handling Jesus freak, though I don’t attend church and am something of a libertarian.

Go over to the The Watcher’s Place for all the rest of the entries.

Khalid Adem Has Been Convicted

Khalid Adem was convicted today and sentenced to ten years in prison for performing a female genital mutilation on his little girl.

A verdict was reached Wednesday afternoon in the case of a Gwinnett County man accused of mutilating his daughter.

After less than three hours of deliberations, a jury made up of seven women and five men decided that Khalid Adem is guilty on charges of cruelty to a child and aggravated battery.

Now that the trial is over, I can say that both Dymphna and I think this guy was railroaded. The most likely scenario is that he knew about the “circumcision”, and may even have suggested it, but did not perform it. Men in Ethiopia never perform this operation; it is always done by the women. This is a travesty.

See Dymphna’s earlier posts for more on this sad affair.


Update: Fausta has reminded me that Mr. Adem was not convicted under the female genital mutilation law, which was passed after his crime was committted, but under a previously existing child battery law.

Dymphna, of course already knew this — I should have run it by her first!

Thanks, Fausta.

Immigration is Business — Immigration is an Industry

Swedish reader LN, who frequently provides social observations about Sweden and Scandinavia in Gates of Vienna’s comments, has sent us the following essay, which is an expansion of comments he posted here earlier.

I have standardized his spelling and punctuation, and modified some of the idioms to conform to current American usage, but otherwise the words and opinions belong to LN himself.

Let him know what you think — he’ll probably be along to comment in due course.


Immigration is Business — Immigration is an Industry

In Sweden, IMMIGRATION is a flourishing and prosperous business employing thousands of persons of national as well as of foreign origin and with a total turnover for all things immigration-related — inclusive of all costs for asylum-seeking or immigration procedures, for immigrants awaiting residence permission, for already resident immigrants waiting for lodgings or work etc., for social allowances given to all unemployed immigrants and to former immigrants who in the meantime have become Swedish citizens and so on ad infinitum — in the magnitude of SEK225,000,000,000 ($1 = SEK7.50) per annum. This is a lie, the State says, but the State is ALWAYS unable (unwilling) to produce any figures of their own about immigration.

How much is SEK225 billion? It corresponds to the revenue from 1,350,000 taxpayers employed in Swedish trade and industry. SEK225 billion also corresponds to approximately 17.5% of total Swedish tax revenues in 2004. Without the immigration expense the collective burden of taxation could be reduced from 54% to 34%.

SEK225 billion is more than the entire GNP of the Baltic States. Estonia and Latvia and Lithuania together in 2004 had a GNP of SEK185 billions. Theoretically Swedish taxpayers would be able to give the Baltic States an eternal vacation plus a 20% raising of standards, if…
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In 2004 a maximum of 15 percent of the stream of immigrants to Sweden were true refugees, according to the UN definition. 85 percent were exploiting the asylum system to come to Protestant Sweden seeking better material living conditions.

Is the same situation principally prevalent in Norway and Denmark, or in Germany, Benelux and France? How is the situation in the USA?

Imagine a glazier working 24/7 — in the night he is out smashing window panes, preferably store windows, and in the daytime he is replacing the smashed panes with new ones. Everybody is earning heaps of money — first of all Mr. Enterpriser himself, then the glassworks, the transport sector, the putty manufacturers and in the beginning even the insurance companies, selling more and more insurance policies that are becoming more and more expensive. What about the shop owners? Their expenses are skyrocketing. No problem, their customers have to pay for this through the rising prices. Lots of people are getting new jobs, lots of tax-money is hopefully being paid, society is thriving. Gross National Product is rising. More money is sent to the European Union (EU) in Brussels and to those countries Sweden is sending Development Aid to: Russia, China, Cuba, Zimbabwe etcetera. Yes, there is nothing wrong with your reading! These expenses are based on and bound to GNP. In the long run the situation for the insurance companies is getting a bit tight. The insurance premiums are getting too expensive to be paid by ordinary small shop owners, so they have to hire security companies to guard their window panes at night. The security companies have to hire more people, buy more cars (preferably Volvo SUVs), buy more petrol — in the long run even the sheiks of Saudi or the madman down in Venezuela are thriving. I have never looked at “The Sopranos” — I could guess there are tangential points.

Nota Bene, very little increase in value is generated. In the long run this kind of business is doomed — the Finale = liquidation. Remember Enron?

Isn’t this a nice fairy-tale, even if it is exaggerated, specialized, and formalized? Why hasn’t a gifted H. C. Anderson created such a successful and innovative story about human ingenuity and innovative activity a nice literary costume — like The Emperor’s Clothes? Because such a malignant and parasitic way of acting was not invented during his lifetime. It was introduced — in Sweden in the 1960s — together with the arrival of a new economy, probably associated to some shady winner of a Nobel Prize for Economics. One thing that characterized the new Economy was that it introduced a new way of reasoning. Before, it was always calculated with a decent markup (profit) of say 15-25%. Now it was asked: how much can we take out? — how much can the market endure?

A pair of shoes of a well-known brand made in China to-day can cost you $100-125. The Chinaman making the shoes, who will die young from breathing toxic glue vapors, gets thirty cents a pair; material is one or two dollars; travel costs for one pair of shoes from Shanghai to New Jersey with the AP Möller-Maersk biggest-in-the-world container-carrier EMMA (taking 11,000 twenty-footers) is less than a quarter of a dollar. In another part of the town in a small shop or at a MART you might find a pair of Chinese-made shoes for $15 — almost the same material and model, the same Chinaman and the same ship, but these shoes will not increase your self-esteem — the haven’t got the BRAND! Stupid world filled with stupid customers!

This ECONOMY, whose scientific name I do not know, is very much in full swing worldwide. It is a prerequisite, a fundamental basis for what is called GLOBALIZING. We already need another GLOBE to sponge and devastate in order in the long run to proceed with the current standard of living. I am sorry to have to point it out, but Al Gore, who might not be a thinker and certainly not a scientist — why not look at him as an errand boy? — is not quite talking through his hat.

Back to reality!

In the fairy-tale above, exchange insurance companies for taxpayers, and smashing window panes for immigration, and you are almost back to true reality, or current everyday life.

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A lot of individual people are living quite nice, and not infrequently more-or-less work-free lives, thanks to immigration. Who are these people? Firstly all those pundits and expert pundits and dedicated pundits and all the loonies that are employed by the state and by the municipalities to work with immigration, anti-racism, gender-equality, multi-culti, adoption, work-creation etcetera. Then all employees of the Swedish Immigration Board, then all those professions that wouldn’t exist if there was no “mass immigration”. I suspect I am leaving out perhaps half of them. The titles of these professions are impossible/very hard to translate — partly because Newspeak is used:

aktivitetskoordinatörer, opinionsbildare, generalsekreterare, projektansvariga, generalsekreterarassistenter, ekonomiassistenter, projektledare, sakkunniga, talesmän, kanslister, asylantassistenter, informationssekreterare, handläggare, fältsamornare, flyktingsamordnare, utredare, kontaktpersoner, dataansvariga, verksamhetskoordinatörer, styrelsekonsulter, mångfaldskonsulenter, förläggningschefer och dito -assistenter, pressekreterare, webbredaktörer, invandrarbibliotekarier, aktivitetsansvariga, organisationsledare, organisationssekreterare, ungdomssekreterare, institutionsföreståndare etc.

Then there are all the lawyers, the interpreters, the celebrities, and the quasi-celebrities, the debaters, the debate leaders, the lecturers, the doctoral candidates, the writers, the editors, the journalists, the professional politicians and the amateur politicians, the bishops, the professors, and other academics who get — if not all, then a substantial part of — their total income from the immigration business.

Finally there is a big group of immigrants or children of immigrants with more often than not a hostile attitude towards ethnic Swedes and the traditional country of Sweden that we elderly called ours. Strangely these people have become the PC establishment’s darlings. They work as freelancers: debate, discuss, write, talk, offend, affront, and disgrace themselves. No debate in TV or in radio is without some of them. Of course they all advocate multi-culti in the extreme and a most generous, restriction-free immigration policy. Below you will find the names of the most frequent ones — as their names expose most of them are of South/Latin American (communist?) origin. Often this group is referred to as the enrichers!

Aleksander Gabelic — Alexandra Pascalidou — Ali Esbati — America Vera-Zavala — Ana Maria Narti — Ardalan Shekarabi — Gellert Tamas — Jabar Amin — Jannis Konstantis — Jerzy Sarnecki — Jesus Alcalá — José Alberto Diaz — José Torres-Perez — Juan Fonseca — Kurdo Baksi — Luciano Astudillo — Masoud Kamali — Mauricio Rojas — Michael Alo — Michael Alonzo — Miguel Benito — Moshen Hakim — Ozan Sunar — Saied Tagavi — Yvonne Ruwaida — Zanyar Adami

None of all these people would consent to any reduced immigration.

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This posting should actually deal with the Swedish Centrum mot rasism — The Center against Racism, so I am now approaching the Poodle’s Kernel.

First of all we have an immigration minister to handle and supervise the big hullabaloo. In Sweden we have got a new and true expert who has devoted herself to the matter since she gave up working in her own massage parlor “Studio 88” back in 1995. After that she, by her own admission, was redeemed by the tragic murder of an African boy in the south of Sweden (the Patric Nadjiis-case) and became mångfaldskonsult (Diversity Consultant = how to implement gender equality and Multi-Culti in society), then a member of Parliament for the People’s Party in 2002, and synchronously for the last years she is said to have studied jurisprudence at the University of Uppsala 140 km distant from the Parliament building in Stockholm! Wow! She has taken no exam yet, but has 5-year-old twins back home.

People of her clan have understood that there is money to make in the “immigration business”. Kitimbwa Sabuni of the National Society of Afroswedes (= afro immigrants) is working hard to get the new expression — AFROPHOBIA — introduced in Sweden. Then there is Wasesa Sabuni, a boxer with some peripheral connection to “immigration business”, Zela Sabuni, who is Activity Director for the Simbacenter, a place where unemployed women of foreign background can meet, talk, and cooperate, and finally Mkyabela Sabuni, second boss of “Centrum mot rasism” (the Center Against Racism), and also uncle to the Immigration Minister, who by the way has decided to close down “the Center Against Racism” January 01 2008. Very wise! Uncle will be without job but certainly not without a fat pension.

The first boss of “Centrum mot rasism” is Yvonne Ruwaida, an old faithful member of the Greens (Miljöpartiet). She is a good old opportunist always following the stream and with excellent contacts among Muslims via her cooperation partner Mehmet Güner Kaplan in another “immigration business” project called “We Work for You”.

Mehmet Güner Kaplan, born 1971 in Turkey, is an active Muslim. He is a new member of Parliament for the Greens this autumn. He is Press Spokesman of the Swedish Muslim Council, he has been secretary for the Young Muslims of Sweden (SUM) 1996-2000 and chairman 2000-2002 and he is Activity Coordinator for the Bureau for Equal Rights, one of 15 of the same kind in Sweden, paid for by the Government.

EVERYTHING mentione up to now is paid for by the Government! Must I whisper: — the taxpayers!

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The Center against Racism — Vision 2010 (A Swan Song)

“The Center against Racism is a leading national and international actor in the work against racism and many other forms of intolerance.

The Center against Racism possesses confidence, mandate, authority and competence to be the most important and natural collaborative partner for the authorities, local governments, commerce and industry, and the NGO’s — nationally as well as internationally — in the struggle against institutional racism, structural discrimination, everyday racism and violence with racist motives.

The Center against Racism is an important actor in the work of schools.

The Center against Racism has promoted a strong development in immigrant organizations and other NGO’s in Sweden, which has contributed to a coordination and collaboration of the civil society. That, in its turn, has led to increased strength, which is needed to counteract institutional racism, structural discrimination and everyday racism.”

In January 2008 the CENTER AGAINST RACISM hopefully will be closed after having conscientiously in three years consumed some 50 millions of the taxpayers’ money on festive representations and entertainments, exclusive office inventories, travels and taxi rides, exclusive hotel or SPA sojournings, high-class beverages, common incompetence, and meaningless and stupid campaigns, like the attack on the black ice-cream bar NOGGER, supposedly reminiscent of “NIGGER”.


Shame on NOGGER!


Update: Credit for the “Nogger” photo: Steen of Snaphanen.

LN has kindly reminded me that I neglected to include his links:

"Studio 88"
Simbacenter
The Center Against Racism
"We Work for You"
the Swedish Muslim Council
the Bureau for Equal Rights
NOGGER 1
NOGGER 2
Funny that the number "88" is popping up again!


Five Maasais among the African animals in ‘the KOLMÅRDEN Animalpark’ create AFROPHOBIA.
Five proud Maasais!

Old McDonald Had a Farm...and a GPS

If the Baron were a farmer instead of a geek, this is the kind of thing he would spend his time on.


What a splendid image, what a worthy use of time!

I hope people are able to see it as they fly over what they presume to be the nothingness between New York and Los Angeles.

Click on the image to see an enlargement. The whole thing is too large for our post width.

I found it at the Kaitlyn Mae Book Blog.

Where There's Laughter, There's Hope

Reader Wally Ballou sent the link to this story.

I’ll be darned. I take it back: if the Saudis can laugh at themselves, there is hope for us yet. Or at least some Saudis can. And “some” is a good start. Never mind the fatwahs and fervent prayers to Allah that he freeze the blood in the veins of these merry-makers. Party-poopers. Imams must have to take “Lack of Sense of Humor 101” in order to be allowed to harangue preach.

Evidently the month of Ramadan is big business for television shows and their revenue. And among the most popular of the shows is one called “Tash Ma Tash” (no, I don’t know what it means either, but it sure sounds risqué, doesn’t it?) —

Each year, new and returning serials are eagerly awaited by millions of viewers. As a sign of the immense popularity of Ramadan broadcasting, revenues generated during the month typically account for 20% of broadcasters’ yearly earnings (Baltimore Sun, October 15). This year, several programs addressed a number of sensitive social and political issues such as terrorism and extremism (al-Watan, September 24)…

This shows my cultural ignorance, but I thought Ramadan was a time of fasting and prayer. Maybe not after sundown? At any rate, one of the most popular shows is annoying the Saudi powers-that-be —
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The program to raise the most attention this year, however, has been the extremely popular Saudi satirical program Tash Ma Tash. It is a long running program that has frequently run up against the boundaries of Saudi society. Over the years, it has parodied a number of sensitive issues, and this year it lampooned a variety of topics including terrorism, extremism, intolerance, the judicial system and the country’s morality police (Arab News, October 8). Several episodes banned last year that dealt with extremism were allowed to be broadcast this year; one tackled the topic of internet jihadis and another dealt with issues of heresy, apostasy and the concept of takfir (al-Watan, October 5). One of the episodes to draw the most attention in the Saudi media this year was a lampoon of the popular Star Academy format entitled “Terrorist Academy.”

[…]

Death threats have been made against those linked with the program, and a fatwa labeled it “sinful to watch” (MSNBC.com, September 28). Some imams have criticized the program at mosques, and they have prayed for “bad things to happen” to the program’s leading actors, while others have asked God to “freeze the blood in their veins”…

Well, I’m glad some things remain the same. But I’m even happier to get some solid evidence that Muslims know how to laugh at themselves. Now if we could just get a Muslim to make some version of “The Life of Brian” in an Islamic format, we’d really be home free.

Oops — I mean make the film and survive to see it played in theatres.

Well, one step at a time.