Gates of Vienna News Feed 12/31/2012

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

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

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

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

Thanks to C. Cantoni, Fjordman, Insubria, JD, Jerry Gordon, JLH, JP, Kitman, The Observer, Vlad Tepes, and all the other tipsters who sent these in.

Notice to tipsters: Please don’t submit extensive excerpts from articles that have been posted behind a subscription firewall, or are otherwise under copyright protection.

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

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

Read More

Will the Truth Set Muslims Free?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Charlie Hebdo will publish a “halal” biography of Mohammed

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

“Neither a cartoon nor a satire”

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

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

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

“Muslims are willing to laugh at themselves”

In November 2011, after the publication of a special issue of the magazine named “Sharia Hebdo” which containing caricatures of Muhammad, the headquarters of the satirical newspaper were burned, its website hacked, and Charb received death threats. Since then he has lived under police protection. More recently, new cartoons published by the magazine Charlie Hebdo sparked strong criticism on the part of many Muslim countries to the point that the French government had to take steps.

Although this time the approach is quite different, Charb expects that he will not please everyone. “If people want to be shocked, they will be shocked, but this will not be done in order to shock. Muslims themselves are also willing to laugh. If we begin to think of them as people handicapped in their capacity to laugh, then one cannot link them with a peaceful Islam, but with an extreme one. One should stop being afraid of Islam, (because) the more you fear Islam, the more scary Islam will be,” he says. He thinks that “it would be a good idea to bring it to the schools; even Muslim children can read it in that they accept that Muhammad is represented (in the cartoons).”

Read More

Europe and the Coming Caliphate: European Mufti-ism

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

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

Hans-Peter Raddatz

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

2. European Mufti-ism

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

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

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

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

On this model, the red-brown Epigoni* of the postwar era transformed Muslims into victims of European colonialism, whose misery could only be alleviated by uncontrolled immigration. In the concentrated lens of this perspective, Israel appears as a mega-colonialist who is degrading the Palestinians to the ultimate scapegoat and sacrificial folk of world history — an anti-Zionist myth cultivated since the Balfour declaration of Project Israel (1917). It transforms Palestine to the original home of the Arabs and the Palestinians to a people allegedly in residence there for a thousand years. Parallel to the Islamic expansion into Europe, there arose an obsessive Palestine cult — a Euro-Islamic pseudo-religion, which elected Gaza to be the object of pilgrimages and the Palestinians to be the chosen people. At the same time an obligatory paranoia spread, which sees a global threat in Israel’s self defense — with a thousandth of the world’s population. Primarily moved by the agitation of Arab delegations, this “terror-state” attracts one-third of all UN resolutions as well Palestinian suicide bombers and rockets. All of this is financed basically by the taxes of Europeans and distributed according to the direction of the EU empire. The covert, mafia-like collaboration of European and Islamic elites is at the center of Bat Ye’or’s discomfiting thesis of the Coming Caliphate.

The twin pilots of this drift into totalitarianism are the Islamic Terror Tandem, Mufti Amin al-Husayni and his disciple, Yassir Arafat. As Hitler’s helper, the former profited from the respect of the combatants, Germany and Great Britain, and escaped the Nuremberg Trials at the intervention of America and France. Arafat was the sought-after partner of such apparently diverse players as the UN, superpower America, the red-brown oligarchy of the EU and both churches. His armed entry to the UN in 1974, the Nobel Peace Prize honoring him and Egyptian President Sadat for the “peace treaty” of Camp David in 1978, his regular visits to Pope John Paul II and his role as the father of modern terror distinguish him as an integrating figure of the Euro-Islamic leadership classes.

From this is derived the ideological concept of Mufti-ism which had already characterized the Middle Eastern policy of war combatants Germany and Great Britain. Today it includes the Dialogue as an expanded inclination toward a new totalitarianism, spread under the anti-Jewish pressure of Islamic interests. The radical energy of this trend expresses not only anti-Semitism, but an indifference to citizens, heavy tax burdens, censorship, perversion of justice and animadversion to one’s own culture, giving impetus to the imperceptible transmogrification from democracy to dictatorship. After the Nazi ideology had borrowed from socialism and the Koran, its left-inclined disciples are drifting into a political multiculturalism which is supplanting the constitutional state and Judaeo-Christian culture with people, sharia and capital. In the process, Arafat’s credo — “For us, peace means the destruction of Israel” — has infiltrated the UN, the EU and then other organizations such as UNESCO and many NGOs of the EU, which serve as “octopus arms” (Bat Ye’or ) to spread a concentrated anti-Israel propaganda.

Next: Dhimmitude versus Islamophobia

Note:

*

Allusion to Greek myth, implying a second generation intent on successfully finishing the war their fathers prosecuted and lost.

Previous posts by Hans-Peter Raddatz:

2011		Mar		6		Is Secularization Possible in Islamic Countries?
2012		Dec		30		Europe and the Coming Caliphate: The Political-Cultural Scenario

Read More

Activity in Sderot

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

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

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

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

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

Jerusalem Post 23-12-2012

Read More

Gates of Vienna News Feed 12/30/2012

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

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

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

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

Thanks to C. Cantoni, Fjordman, heroyalwhyness, Insubria, JD, Jerry Gordon, Kitman, Vlad Tepes, and all the other tipsters who sent these in.

Notice to tipsters: Please don’t submit extensive excerpts from articles that have been posted behind a subscription firewall, or are otherwise under copyright protection.

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

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

Read More

Europe and the Coming Caliphate: The Political-Cultural Scenario

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

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

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

Hans-Peter Raddatz

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

1. The Political-Cultural Scenario

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

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

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

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

“For precisely that reason,” says Helmut Plessner, a leading mind in philosophical anthropology, “parliamentary democracy in its functional, international connections is threatened by the continuing change to a totalitarian state which — within the system of open pluralism — tends to bind the anonymous violence of command to a hierarchical pyramid and therefore to a legitimate group of persons.”

Anyone who is seeking explanations for the feudalization of European politics and the insistence on a dogmatic privileging of Islam and its immigrating masses, can find in Bat Ye’or plenteous material a testimony of the collaboration of the Euro- and Islam-elites and the purposeful deception of the Western population. When institutions say monotonously and increasingly since the “Arab Spring” that “Islam is on the path to democracy,” what is meant is a state which is in the process of radicalizing and anonymizing the elites.

There are many examples of the fact that not only are immeasurable conflicts accepted as a part of the bargain, but also that even the active organs of the society are often well-intentioned, politically or religiously motivated offenders — the professional “respectable ones” that every ruling system needs. After the US ambassador to Libya (with three co-workers) had been killed in a long-planned assassination plot, and dragged through the streets of Benghazi by fanatical Muslims, publicly regulated German television maintained — with no regard for the truth — that this had been provoked spontaneously by a filmed insult to the Prophet; but they declined to show the two month-old video “so as not to participate in the racist persecution” (ZDF “Today” September 11, 2012). The authors of this presentation were not the only ones who neglected to give further details about the ambassador, which would have brought out something worth knowing, because his career exemplified irreconcilable cultural conflict.

From the grassroots phase working on his own at the community level in Morocco, to station chief in the US administration, to contributing strategist in the NATO bombardment, to enforcement of the Islamic regime which succeeded Ghadaffi, his career illustrated the narcissistic-schizophrenic blend of the Islam/West constellation. For it did the ambassador no good to persistently praise the advantages of Islamic civilization. Although (or because) he had helped to bring them to power (cf. www.eussner.net September, 9, 2012), the jihad fighters killed him, and his homosexuality drove them to extraordinary cruelty.

In the criss-cross axis between elites and mass, thinking and acting, perpetrators and victims, the person of the ambassador is shown as a grotesque product of a quasi-chemical, inhumane structural change, which — along with propaganda as the print medium of “public opinion” — occupies a prominent place in Hannah Arendt’s list of the Elements of Totalitarian Rule (Frankfurt, 1958). The value of The Coming Caliphate results essentially from the connection of the main aspects of the book with the incentives of the contemporary form of democracy and its intercultural requirements for humility. It was preached by Jürgen Habermas for an entire scholarly career as radical democracy, and with worldwide success. Central to his concept is the “procedural gestalt” as a disguised discipline of obedience, which — with decades of pluralization — metamorphosed into “voluntary obedience” and emerged as communicative action, correctness, excellence and self-reflection as well as other deceptive concepts.

So much more strictly is it held by the multiple pseudo-freedoms of the engineered system, i.e., the nomad society, which has as many names as code terms. Risk society, work society, consumer society, envy society, contingency society, control society, pleasure society are only some of the current variants, of which the most important is the tolerance society. As is known, Niklas Luhmann* expanded this to the theory of a decrease in alternate ways of thinking, which reduces the human being to a cog in the self-perpetuating society. It is based on the paradox of complexity as an endless cycle, which requires a “necessarily diabolical” self-observing observer. Luhmann — who commands enormous authority and the freedom of culturally incorrect but scientifically correct plain speaking — calls him Iblis,* the Islamic Devil. To the extent that the diminution of thinking replaces the older culture as interculturally evil, its place can be taken by the Islamic Devil, who appears not as an alternative to Allah, but as his competition in the realm of intrigue, deception and manipulation. Since he is also the lord of the magical, occult and demonic, Iblis quite logically embodies the functional principle of modernity. Accelerating it strengthens virtuality, and therewith both self-deception and obscurantism and this channels Allah’s chief opponent. The more modern thought is fragmented, the more compatible with the Western power process does Allah become, not only as the “best schemer” but as a time lord, who is incessantly involved in creating a new world against the Jews and Christians (cf. Islamophobia, 1, NO 3/12).

Next: European Mufti-ism

Note

*

Niklas Luhmann was a German sociologist known in the second half of the 20th century for his System Theory, in which systems are characterized by their communication and “coding.” When communication breaks down, the system disappears. Considered very difficult to read, which, when speaking of a German scholarly writer, implies a nearly impenetrable prose.

Read More

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

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

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

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

The translated article from NRK:

One person hospitalized after mass brawl at asylum center

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

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

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

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

Several others residents received minor injuries. According to police the majority of the residents at the asylum center were involved in the dispute.

“We were told that most of the 38 residents at the center were involved in the fight, so the situation was quite heated for a while,” says Tinjar.

No one has been arrested in connection with the brawl, but police will initiate an investigation.

“It was quite chaotic there at one stage, so we’ll have to sit down and try and find the cause that triggered the dispute,” says Tinjar.

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

Read More

Who is Violent in Germany?

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

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

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

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

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

Who is Violent in Germany?
by Rembrandt Clancy

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“We are also worried about the violence in subway stations or on the streets where persons are attacked because they have black hair and a dark skin”

[President Joachim Gauck’s complete speech can be found in German at Spiegel Online.]

As if to confirm that Germans are bigoted racists with a Nazi family tree, an ad has been running, apparently for some time, on info-screens in the Munich underground. In this video which is almost entirely without language, actors mime fortuitous white-on-brown violence. The video, called “Munich is Watching” (München schaut hin), shows a smiling, affable dark-skinned immigrant waiting on tables in the beer garden of the Chinese Tower in Munich. He is deliberately jostled by two blond ruffians in the course of which he in turn is caused to unintentionally jostle a female patron. He then has to suffer her telling him not to touch her, while her German friend makes ready to punch him in the face. All Munich looks on. The credits at the end show that the ad has been sponsored by many well-known German firms such as Siemens and BMW Group. (Munich is the city of the proposed “Centre for Islam in Europe” — ZIE-M)

In this same context, Politically Incorrect has drawn attention to data which they believe to be more in keeping with the evidence of their senses than President Gauck’s statement. In one article they provide a link to a website called “German Victims, Foreign Perpetrators” (Deutsche Opfer, fremde Täter) which catalogues crime incidents on a map of Germany. The user clicks on a symbol on the map which then links to details of the crime and additional sources.

Also on Politically Incorrect, a Brazilian reader sent in a collection of 270 comments from the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung which are highly critical of Gauck’s speech. How representative they are of German sentiment is hard to say, but there were many interesting standpoints among them. I choose here two comments which draw a comparison between President Gauck’s Christmas address and the Christmas message of Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth:

Ulrike Berner (ulrikef…) — 26.12.2012 11:05 Uhr

Disappointed by Gauck …

Instead of lectures calling upon all of us to share, be tolerant … the English Queen had instead expressed her “Thank you”.

Stefan Uhlig (printul) — 26.12.2012 09:59 Uhr

Model Queen

Our dear Federal President, Pastor Gauck, I recommend you read the Christmas message of the Queen of England (today on sueddeutsche.de). Instead of priggishly pointing her finger and overly didactically rebuking her own countrymen, the Queen said to her people, plain and simply, “Thank you” and praised them for their conduct on various occasions. With us that is unthinkable.

Below is a selection from Udo Ulfkotte’s reaction to Gauck’s Christmas address. Ulfkotte is well-known in Germany for his Islam-critical books. He writes also for the independent media outlet Kopp Online. Ulfkotte penned his reaction to Gauck’s speech on Christmas Day, and it appears to have been widely reproduced, quoted or linked by German sites:

Our politicians demand more understanding and solidarity with Muslims. How gaga that is one can be gleaned from a typical, current incident. In multicultural Berlin a 20-year-old woman was raped by three Turks Osman D. (17), Amir H. (18) and Mohamad El-S. (17). The perpetrators received, politically correctly, only a suspended sentence, they laughed and wander at large. It interests no politician. And there is no solidarity with the victim.

Let us take a look at how other countries handle such riffraff. In India, a few days ago, a female student was the victim of a group rape on a bus. In the capital of New Delhi there were mass protests on account of it. In India the government condemned the rape and declared solidarity with the victim of the rape. In Germany the Federal President is mute about such crimes when they are committed here in Germany. In a city like Cologne approximately 70 percent of the rapists are Turkish, Alice Schwarzer said once. No wonder that our Federal President remains silent about it. But he who is silent makes himself complicit. Gauck continues to declare — politically correctly — his solidarity with immigrants. Most certainly he does not have the majority of the German population behind him. What would it be like if our Federal President in his Christmas address were to call for solidarity with the indigenous people against criminal immigrants instead of demanding more solidarity of the indigenous people with immigrants? What would it be like if politicians of the standing of Herr Gauck would concern themselves about the victims of the unscrupulous immigration policy? What would it be like if on Christmas if they were to visit those in the border region who day after day are being plundered and robbed by our eastern neighbours? But for this he is too cowardly. Politicians prefer to fight against “the right” — and against their own people.

That is the true Christmas message of this dissolute time. One places oneself on the side of criminals and demands solidarity with them. And the victims are given a kick. Merry Christmas.

Transcript of the news video:

Anchorman:	A report of a bodily injury with a dreadful allegation. Such has been occupying the Bonn police since Christmas Eve. Two putative Islamists in Bonn are supposed to have slit the tongue of an Indian man, and did it because the exchange student refused to convert to Islam. This quite outrageous-sounding case is what the investigative authorities are taking however very seriously. Police, the State Protection Office and the Public Prosecutor's Office are investigating.
Reporter:	The 24-year-old Indian man was on his way on foot along Sebastianstrasse in the direction of Poppelsdorf. He intended to spend Christmas Eve with friends in a pub. Then he said that two men of oriental appearance accosted him and demanded that he convert to Islam. When he ignored this, the alleged Muslims struck him down from behind and sliced his tongue. The Bonn police are taking the incident very seriously.
Police Spokesman:	The way things stand currently we are proceeding on the assumption of a politically motivated criminal offence. And grounds could also exist for attributing the committing of the crime to the Islamist milieu. That is the factual situation. For us at Bonn police headquarters, and also for the investigation team, there is presently no concrete preliminary evidence, initially, of connections with other offences; … as for example, a connection to attack scenario at the central train station in Bonn.
Reporter:	For a long time Bonn has been considered an Islamist stronghold. In May Salafists rioted after a right-wing provocation in Bonn-Lengsdorf. Two police officers were seriously injured at the scene by an extremist with a knife. The perpetrator is in prison, but recently Islamists threatened through an internet video to extort his release. Finally there is the bomb in the central train station in Bonn: also here the police presume an Islamistic-terrorist background. However, it is unclear whether in the current case Islamists were in fact active. "In any case, the incident cannot have anything to do with religion," said the Muslim Council of Bonn:
Muslim Council spokesman:	There is no compulsion in Religion [Sura 2.256]. And it is absolutely incomprehensible that this is a religious act. So [there were] some sort of nutters, who were on the move, — And we are also prepared, and also with full assistance, to support [the police], to get these culprits.
Reporter:	The Indian student was apparently lucky. How serious the injuries were is unknown. But at least he has been able to leave the hospital in the meantime.

Read More

Gates of Vienna News Feed 12/29/2012

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

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

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

Thanks to C. Cantoni, Fjordman, Insubria, JP, Nilk, Vlad Tepes, and all the other tipsters who sent these in.

Notice to tipsters: Please don’t submit extensive excerpts from articles that have been posted behind a subscription firewall, or are otherwise under copyright protection.

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

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

Read More

On Echo Chambers and Media Polarization

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

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

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

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

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

Jill Walker Rettberg:

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

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

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

Your reference to the article that claims that…

1.		blog readers are more polarized than non-blog-readers or consumers of various television news programs, and
2.		left-wing blogs inspire more political participation than right-wing blogs

…is highly suspect.

First, the term ‘polarized’ has a negative connotation as if the preferred state of people is that people remain anesthetized rather than polarized — as if having no opinion — or a state-approved opinion — is somehow better than having a strong or conflicting opinion.

Second, the consumers of various television news programs are simply consuming state-approved and/or state-funded propaganda intended to keep people in the dark about major issues — thus calm and manageable for current leaders. To wit, television news programs are themselves polarized to reflect the goals of left-wing leaders. To claim that television news programs are non-polarized is to beggar disbelief in anyone who watches said shows.

Please note that former Obama czar Cass Sunstein reviewed the article that you referenced prior to its publication so said article can hardly be seen to be neutral.

“Sunstein gained notoriety on a number of fronts. He called for dispatching government agents to sabotage individuals and groups opposed to government — most notably those at odds with the official 9/11 narrative — and suggested the government hold people responsible for the information they post on the internet.”

Obama’s Authoritarian Adviser Sunstein Steps Down

Likewise, modern mass media is notoriously left-leaning rather than neutral.

Just the fact that reporters in the left-leaning mass media have omitted to question Obama about the many documented fraudulent activities of Obama and his many criminal cronies is an indication of the left-wing extremism of the mass media.

The best that we can hope is that you will learn something factual about Islam while you are reading about it.

Please, read the entire site from top to bottom until you understand that extremism is the actions of Muslims rather than the words of anti-jihadists. Extremism is the Marxist-Islamic partnership to overthrow Western civilization.

— Egghead

Read More

“Freedom Is Worth It”

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

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

Transcript (with the original time stamps):

29:44		NOS: Something that is also pending, which is one of the two core points
29:48		of the PVV that started with the declaration of independence
29:52		when the PVV was founded: one was
29:56		the government culture and the other was the fight against Islam.
30:00		You have announced Fitna 2, what's the status of that?
30:04		GW: Yes. it will certainly appear but I am not
30:08		working on it at the moment. It's not my number 1 priority at the moment.
30:12		I have just published a book in America,
30:16		earlier this year about Islam, the book
30:20		will be published at the beginning of January, or the end of January I think, in Germany
30:24		I am going to address the theme of Islam
30:28		next year too in addition to everything concerned with Europe,
30:32		and with the economic situation
30:36		and put Islam more on the agenda again. People will
30:40		more than in recent years
30:44		see us, and myself personally, oppose
30:48		the Islamisation of the Netherlands - still the greatest threat
30:52		facing our country, whether it concerns immigration
30:56		or Islamic schools or mosques
31:00		or the 'Moroccan problem' we have,
31:04		culturally and religiously, but also socially
31:08		oriented. We are going to pay attention to these. There are actually three important topics
31:13		for next year for the PVV. One is of course everything concerned with the economy
31:17		easing the burden on people, boosting the economy
31:21		and opposing the package from the two socialist parties
31:25		who want to increase taxes instead of reducing them and not touch development aid
31:29		the European Union and so on. That's one. The second is Europe
31:33		ensuring that we continue to be an independent country. That, as the Netherlands, we ensure
31:37		we don't become subordinate to Europe. We have to submit our budget
31:41		to Brussels. We did that for the first time last year. A lot of people don't know that
31:45		and we are now going to sign contracts with Brussels so that we hardly need any more
31:49		elections in the Netherlands, so much is going to Brussels. We are also going to try
31:53		to prevent that and develop alternatives. Organise congresses
31:57		here in the Dutch parliament too. The third point is the Islamic
32:01		step things up a notch, both here in the Netherlands
32:05		but also internationally, from Australia to America, to
32:09		Switzerland, to everywhere, but also here in the Netherlands to ensure
32:13		that the greatest sickness that our country has had during the last century - which is called Islam
32:17		that we finally tackle it, drive it back,
32:21		stop relativising it by calling it a religion.
32:25		This message, these three things, they are my challenge
32:29		for the next year. I once
32:33		founded Islam ... sorry, Islam... I founded the PVV
32:37		to combat Islam. We chose the name Party for Freedom, we talked about it earlier in this interview,
32:41		is concerned with my absolute conviction
32:45		that Islam and freedom are diametrically opposed to one another
32:49		the more Islam you have, the less freedom everyone in a country has. You can see that
32:53		in the countries where Islam is dominant. The Arabic Spring
32:57		doesn't exist ... It will never exist in the Netherlands either, it is always a stark, angry
33:01		dark winter. And we must not have that in the Netherlands.
33:06		I am going to make proposals, offer ideas
33:10		that are needed in the Netherlands. NOS: In the Dutch parliament, this plea
33:14		your fight against Islam, has no support.
33:18		Except perhaps the SGP, which also has major reservations
33:22		about Islam. But none of the other parties say,
33:26		yes, we agree with that. GW: But that doesn't matter. It's the same with Europe. Look,
33:30		even the socialist party, Mr Roemer, has said that
33:34		he doesn't exclude a political union in the future; that he
33:38		thinks such a thing can be considered. Our position on Europe
33:42		Not one party says we should stop giving money to Greece
33:45		we mustn't transfer competencies to
33:48		... stop Brussels. The same
33:51		applies for Islam, perhaps with the exception of the SGP,
33:54		that doesn't mean we should stay silent.
33:57		I am convinced that very many people in the Netherlands
34:01		are fed up with the fact that we have been paying billions to Greece and Brussels
34:05		while here in the Netherlands
34:09		people are still burdened with tax and VAT increases and so on
34:13		NOS: Getting back to Islam, that is one the key issues you are going to step up ... GW: Yes,
34:18		NOS: I am going to focus on, you say, but it has no support
34:22		GW: Look, you are more "Haags" than I am
34:26		You appear to live in a Hague bubble
34:30		... support in parliament ... what do I care about parliament?
34:34		what's important is support in the Netherlands. I am here for the electorate. Of course, it's nice
34:38		if a proposal gets majority support in parliament.
34:42		But we aren't going to change our position on Europe, Islam, or taxation
34:46		in such a way that,
34:50		dilute it so that it becomes a weak compromise
34:54		with a majority. I would rather set our sights higher and take a standpoint for our voters
34:58		and try and change the Netherlands, create the conditions for that
35:02		than avoid the issues, reach compromises and then
35:06		take a step back, as page 18 of the Agrarisch Dagblad said,
35:10		that doesn't help the Netherlands. We have to stand by our principles
35:14		those of the PVV; change the Netherlands how we want it and not
35:18		come along with weak compromises. NOS: But do your supporters see the fight against Islam
35:22		I get the impression that they do see the problems with Islam
35:26		where they live, but you justify it much more on an ideological level, namely
35:30		the war between the West and Islam. GW: They are related.
35:34		You can look at the fight at a macro level. You can say
35:38		it is an ideology comparable to fascism ...
35:42		that's true ... we have to fight on that
35:46		basis. That's why I wrote a book, travel, give speeches,
35:50		make films; that's a very important goal, but you can also see the fight
35:54		- and that is just as important - that people also fight at the micro level.
35:58		I said it last week too, it's a Moroccan problem, it's not a problem
36:02		with New Zealanders or Canadians. We have a Moroccan problem.
36:07		In their nature, or in their culture, I should say,
36:11		everything that doesn't belong to their group
36:15		can be attacked. That is the vision, and that's what I call it,
36:19		Moroccan racism. Moroccans rarely
36:23		steal from each other,
36:27		beat each other up,
36:31		that doesn't happen. But the tram driver
36:35		who is spat on, the woman in the street who is whistled at
36:39		and beaten up or assaulted. The people who are robbed in a shopping centre
36:43		they notice, and those are the hard statistics,
36:47		that the cause is often - and I don't say always, it isn't all Moroccans -
36:51		Moroccan people. I told you earlier, 60% of Moroccan
36:55		youth are known to the police.
37:00		Those are unheard of statistics and of course they are culture-related,
37:04		of course they are related to upbringing, and of course they are related to the Islamic
37:08		culture. You must conduct that debate, and we do that.
37:12		at micro level; but we also do it at macro level.
37:16		NOS: You call it Moroccan racism, but is it
37:20		Islamic racism? Can we compare the Moroccans with Turkish racism?
37:24		Islam is racist. I mean,
37:28		Islam reads in the Quran that everything that isn't Islamic
37:32		is inferior
37:36		must pay tax, must be subservient as a dhimmi
37:40		must be subjugated, or must be killed; in essence,
37:44		Islam is a racist, totalitarian ideology.
37:48		NOS: Do you think that Moroccans, Turks, Islamists in the Netherlands also feel that way?
37:52		GW: I can't speak on behalf of all those people,
37:56		I'm certainly not going to say that they are all like that,
38:00		that would not be right, and I don't think it's so. But I do
38:04		think that a culture, an ideology - a religion as some people call it -
38:08		must honestly be called what it is.
38:12		and that what is happening on the streets in the Netherlands is not a coincidence,
38:16		that it doesn't happen with Canadians, but it does happen with Moroccans
38:20		and you must deal strictly with that, with serious punishment, taking away their passports
38:24		and deporting them, but you must also make the right analysis and that is concerned
38:28		with a racist ideology, a racist religion called
38:32		Islam. It's not the people; it's the ideology,
38:36		and you have to dare to say that or you will never solve the problems
38:40		NOS: Is that your mission in life? GW: Absolutely.
38:44		NOS: How long will you keep doing it? GW: Until I die. NOS: As a member of parliament too?
38:48		GW: As a member of parliament too, yes,
38:52		though maybe not when I'm 93 if I ever get that old. This is extremely important.
38:56		But to reiterate, I'm not driven by hate of people or anything,
39:00		I don't hate anyone, but because I know that freedom
39:04		is worth it, and I know that lots of people.
39:08		I've visited nearly all of the Islamic countries, they are very
39:12		friendly, hospitable people
39:16		who all have one thing in common, they live under the yoke of Islamic ideology
39:20		are oppressed, punished
39:25		are limited in every way possible, and you see that
39:29		what is happening there is also happening in the West and you have to stop it
39:33		if we want to ensure that your children, my children, our grandchildren
39:37		will be able to live in a free country. We mustn't fight a war against
39:41		people, but we must dare to call a racist ideology -which is what Islam is -
39:45		what it is, and not be held back by threats
39:49		court cases, or politicians of whatever party
39:53		that just encourages me to continue.
39:57		2013 will be the year we oppose
40:01		the cabinet, give the Netherlands back to the people, fight for Europe
40:05		and fight the racism of Islam even more.

Read More

Gates of Vienna News Feed 12/28/2012

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

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

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

Thanks to C. Cantoni, Fjordman, Insubria, JD, JP, Vlad Tepes, and all the other tipsters who sent these in.

Notice to tipsters: Please don’t submit extensive excerpts from articles that have been posted behind a subscription firewall, or are otherwise under copyright protection.

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

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

Read More

Harassment, Tolerance, Security, and “Scum Villages”

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

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

Many thanks to Hermes for the translation:

Amsterdam: No tolerance for the enemies of tolerance

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The inner core of the concept — fighting against serious and continued intimidation — is clearly defined, the spokesperson says, while the target group pointed out by Wilders was obscurely defined as “antisocial persistent offenders”.

What connects the two proposals is the completely new Dutch debate on security, in which they fit together smoothly despite their differences. In recent years there has been a significant shift here, according to which the demand for a strong hand on the part of justice, police and local authorities has become mainstream.

The debate is much more characterized by the term “harassment” than by “criminality”. In this debate it is often the subjective feeling of security what is decisive instead of objectively measurable criteria such as the crime statistics.

The tolerant society has become sensitive. It’s no longer about crime, which is an issue of rights. It’s about the right to feel comfortable in your own town, the right not to be disturbed or bothered by others.

An example from the recent past depicts this appropriately. Some time ago, the Dutch police started a poster campaign soliciting trainees. One of the posters showed a group of young males standing in a supposedly typical pose on a playground or squatting in a courtyard on their mopeds, with the peak of their baseball caps pulled over their faces, thus covering their eyes. The text summarized the new situation of the citizens’ feelings: “Can you explain why inaction causes also harassment?”

In Amsterdam, what falls under the heading of “harassment” is illustrated by two statements that the newspaper Het Parool presented to its readers on its website for a vote. In the summer of 2011, a clear majority expressed themselves in favour of putting an end to the barbecues being organized in the most popular park of the city. Last time 85% agreed that the districts should maintain separate lists for “young criminals”.

Harassment is thus in this debate everything ranging from the severe cases pointed out by the mayor of Amsterdam, to the so-called “hangjongeren”, that is, “young people hanging around”.

A cross-party consensus declared that intervention is needed against all types of harassment. When the current Prime Minister Mark Rutte, who is a member of the Liberal Party, was re-elected in September, he was celebrated by his supporters on a stage whose background showed the slogan “More blue (police) on the streets instead of sitting in the office.”

Essentially, it is not only the assumption that the police are chronically understaffed, but also the conclusion that the citizens should stand on their side and help them. In this regard, the project “Burgernet” — “Citizens’ Network” is a success story. This is a project in which the residents of a district can register at their corresponding police station. Immediately after a crime takes place, or a person goes missing, they are then contacted by phone and are given a physical description. They are immediately supposed to report their observations to the police until they officially end the search operation.

The economic aspects of this project have nothing to do with the former indirect involvement of right-wing populists in the government, as was the case until last spring. Rather, the introduction of the local Burgernet-cooperation system composed of citizens, police and local authorities with as far as possible a nationwide scope, was completely decided without the influence of Wilders’ disciples. Even the current, social-liberal coalition sticks to this run-up. Meanwhile, more than 94 percent of all Dutch municipalities are involved.

It seems that the very tolerant Amsterdam, the tolerant Netherlands plays a pioneering role in a new dimension of repression. The segregation of aggressive people in such a way that no criminal law framework is required.

This raises an unpleasant question. Are those in the tolerant milieu seeking harmony in diversity so sensitive that while they actually oppose repression, they create new “advanced forms” of repression?

Read More

Where Will the Juggernaut Stop This Time?

*** Update from Dymphna ***

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

No News From Sderot — A Speculation
by MC

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Islamic crusade which slaughtered the millions in North Africa comprised an organised band of looters and desperados ripping through peaceful and settled lands. In the residue of the Pax Romana, the bread basket thus became a dust bowl.

But in modern times, war is carried out not in the street, but at the bank.

We are in a long and deep economic recession, happily administered by an American president of dubious motivation whose past is a secret kept from the electorate, and who has now been re-elected on the strength of an vote that shows much evidence of having been rigged (and an opposing candidate who could not even have won a straight election).

This story would not be out of place in a fantasy novel, but unfortunately Gandalf and Aragorn are missing and the Hobbits are in their burrows watching Big Brother. So Sauron goes from strength to strength.

Thus my bank account too becomes a dust bowl. There will come a time when I too am enslaved by the Barbary Pirates of Banking .

The world owes the USMC a huge debt: on the shores of Tripoli they cauterised a malignant growth that had paralysed sea trade in the Mediterranean and thus most of the Western world. Behind the Marines was a strong and insightful leader, with the nerve to project nascent US sea power on a three thousand mile surgical invasion, in sailing ships. Britain and France were better equipped and closer, but preferred to pay the ransoms.

Unfortunately, Jefferson is also missing today.

If indeed the huge wealth of Islam has bought the loyalty of our leaders, then they need to watch out: wealth is only wealth if there is something to buy. Whilst Islam giveth, Islam also taketh away. Islamic countries are poor countries, with a few hugely rich families dominating. Those families have unlimited power, and they do not share it. Bought leaders will in their turn be enslaved, the “useful idiots” cited by Lenin will become the “greedy morons” of Al Saud.

If, however, our leaders think to use the violence endemic in Islam for their own Hegelian ends, to supply the “Eastern” antithesis to the “Western” thesis, then they need to be aware of what may have happened last time. The juggernaut rolled, but it did not stop at Jerusalem, or Constantinople: it ended up at the very Gates of Vienna and the Holy Roman Empire itself.

Read More