The guardians of Norwegian “justice” overseeing the trial of Anders Behring Breivik have decided it’s safe to broadcast the testimony of Øyvind Strømmen directly to the public, but not that of Bruce Bawer and Fjordman, whose words will have to be filtered by loyal media lapdogs first.

The Oslo court has destroyed what little credibility it had left with this nakedly political decision.

Many thanks to our Norwegian correspondent The Observer for translating this article from Document.no:

The peculiar practice of explaining and giving evidence

The court has decided that the testimony of the experts witnesses subpoenaed by the defense, such as the testimony of Øyvind Strømmen, Lars Gule and Matthias Gardell, can be broadcast, but not the testimony of Bruce Bawer and Ole Jørgen Anfindsen.

This basically means that so-called expert witnesses and political activists will have the opportunity to give their personal assessments of political opponents directly to the public, while those whom they criticize, in this case Mr. Bawer and Mr. Anfindsen, are not granted this privilege. Mr. Bawer and Mr. Anfindsen have to rely on journalists who are critical and even hostile to their political views to correctly report their testimony.

The explanation that the court has chosen to justify such a decision with is that it fears that Anders Behring Breivik will seize the opportunity to make offensive remarks during the testimony of Mr. Bawer and Mr. Anfindsen.

The court has decided that the media will be allowed to broadcast the testimony of the following expert witnesses:

• Øyvind Strømmen (31 May)
• Terje Emberland (31 May)
• Tore Bjørgo (31 May)
• Frank Aarebrot (June 1)
• Brynjar Lia (June 1)
• Lars Gule (June 1)
• Hanne Nabintu Herland (1 June)
• Mattias Gardell (4th June)
• Einar Øvereng (5th June)
• Ulrik Fredrik Malt (June 8)
• Svenn Torgersen (June 8)
• Pål Grøndahl (June 11)
• Einar Kringlen (June 11)
• Tarjei Rygnestad (18 June)
• Karl Heinrik Melle (18 June).

[Note from the Baron: I recognize only four of those names, but I’ll wager that our Norwegian readers can fill in some of the other bios. I know that Hanne Nabintu Herland is no friend of Multiculturalism; the other three are lefties.]

Whereas evidence from the political community will not be allowed to be broadcast:

“The court therefore believes it would be unwise to allow the broadcast of the remaining testimony as long as the defendant’s statements are not allowed to be broadcast. The remaining witnesses are for the most part police officers, health professionals, politicians and private individuals who will give evidence concerning the investigation, treatment and observation of the defendant, politics directly or indirectly connected with the defendant via, among others, the extreme right-wing community. Such testimony will typically have the potential to give rise to statements by the defendant. On this basis, the remaining testimony is not permitted to be broadcast.”

Previous posts about the trial of Anders Behring Breivik:

2012		Apr		11		Circus Breivik
				14		The Show Begins
				16		Fjordman: The Breivik Trial Begins
				17		Trial Without Limits
				17		Cracking Down on Christian Terrorism
				18		Breivik in Brief
				19		Norwegian News Roundup
				20		The Best Laid Plans of Mice and Multiculturalists
				21		The Norwegian Straitjacket
				25		The Trial of Anders Behring Breivik: Week One
				27		Is Breivik’s Trial Unconstitutional?
		May		21		Opting Out of Circus Breivik
				22		Islamophobia ‘Experts’ to be Called in Breivik Case
				23		Narcissism Trumps Ideology

Spring Fundraiser 2012, Day One


As regular readers know all too well, we have a fund-raiser week every quarter of the year. These blegs have some theme or other — often a topic which has become umm…“topical” in the previous few weeks. The fundraising goes (usually) from one Tuesday to the next. The first day announces our theme; subsequent days each have a single Fundraising Post which deals — more or less — with the chosen theme (some days hewing a bit closer to this goal than others). Meanwhile, business goes on as usual. The news reports, cultural enrichment atrocities stories, guest essays, translations, videos, etc. appear as we’re given them or as whimsy dictates. We usually stay within the bounds of our mission statement but not always.

So. The First Day of the Fundraiser announces our theme. Subsequent daily Fundraiser posts expand on that theme. In addition, the dailies have a report on the various states and countries that showed up in the Donors’ Circle for the previous day. Everyone likes to check on the status of their own home place.

Sometimes we forget to make the Fundraiser Post of the Day more obvious to our readers. I mean, it’s obvious to us since we’ve been pondering it in the previous weeks, but our signal to you is rather low. A long-time reader in California wrote me the other day to thank us for our blog. As good as it is, he said, he also had the feeling we were Mr. Magoos when it came to monetizing our product.

Mr. Magoo??! Precisely!

I hadn’t though of him in years, but our California reader captured the essence of our problem: it is utterly essential to have our readers’ donations if we are to continue to keep the Gates of Vienna open. When the Baron went unemployed our advisor told us firmly that we had to fundraise and we had to do so consistently, once a month. We talked her down to once a quarter, and so it has remained ever since. Even after all this time and practice, though, we’re still not terribly adept. I have been known to write a Fundraiser post and neglect to mention fundraising at all. Yes, I did stick to the theme for that quarter, but it was as though I were expecting you to somehow apprehend the money part just by seeing the theme.

Dear me. The only thing wrong with our life as Magoos is that we’re not independently wealthy cartoon characters like Mr. M. However, the Baron’s computer eyesight resembles the original Magoo more closely every year. And he continues to display that benign optimism which first attracted me.

So this is Day One of the Second Quarter’s Fundraiser and we are asking that you donate whatever you can afford to keep this project going. We get by with a lot of help from our readers.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$£££££££££€€€€€€€€€€ — sorry, those are the only currencies I know. However, if other designations show up in PayPal, I’ll consult this chart.

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When we sat down to talk about this Fundraiser the idea of diversity came quickly to mind.

I mean both real diversity in the true sense of that word and also the sadly more usual faux diversity which currently hampers and restricts the thinking of many otherwise rational people.

Remember those horror stories about the ancient Chinese custom of binding women’s feet to make them more eligible for the marriage market? The p.c. forms of diversity are like that: they bind and constrict the minds of the intelligentsia in order to make them marketable. What use intelligence if no one will hire you because you think wrong thoughts? Besides, political correctness is a virtue in and of itself. If “everybody knows” then there is no need to bother your pretty little head about some thorny issue; the subject is “settled”. Consensus has arrived; the tedious bother of having to unpack all your ideas and rummage through them to find something suitable can be safely jettisoned.

Not living with Consensus makes the pee cee folks uneasy. Whatever will they think about a given subject if there is no one to tell them what they should be thinking? It’s so much easier to be told by the experts than it is to go to all the bother of figuring out what might be a possible alternative, or even to be told there might be several possible ‘cases’ and it needs more discussion, more investigation.

In Pee Cee World, Hell is just another name for ambiguity.

Diversity as defined by the Left is deterministic (and they are in charge of those determinations). The contents are what they have decided the contents will be and — above all — the subject is closed to further discussion, especially public discussion by those not accepted into the Guild of Experts.

On the other hand, Diversity as defined by those who Think Differently is a more robust procedure. It’s often messy, ambiguous, and open-ended. But is sure is more fun. Often, the subject is left unfinished, left for those who come after to do more investigating.

What got us to this quarter’s theme? Why those lovely folks in Norway, those Deep Thinkers who are certain you’re all cretins. Remember them? The Klassekampen Kids, Andreas Malm and Tor Bach? Their summation of your education, erudition, marital state, and economic status was risible and wrong. Their grand analysis was far distant from the True North I see in your emails, your comments, and your guest posts. Their summary judgments made me see again how much the Left has grown to resemble the medieval Church, where the truth passed at great risk and only in whispers. No doubt this orthodoxy of the Left will soon crack under the same pressures which blew the Church apart.

Examining the smithereens will be instructive for those of us who are left to collect them.

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Okay. The demographic data from the KK claimed you were ill-educated. But your responses included numerous readers with post-graduate degrees and accomplishments in several languages. Lots of science education, but then the hard sciences often track with conservative or independent politics of varying hues. And despite the stereotypes regarding doctors, engineers, physicists, etc., there were as many religious believers as there were atheists. Just like real life, not many signed up for the agnostic category.

Many of you reported marriages of long standing with children and grandchildren. There are also readers without children, of course, and some without mates. No one said they were unhappy with the way things had turned out, and obviously marriage and/or children are not for everyone. However, in sum, GoV readers are a fertile bunch, and this is just what David Goldman says we need to survive as a culture.

How Civilizations Die: (And Why Islam Is Dying Too)

I don’t agree entirely with his analysis or summation, but it’s a heck of a lot closer than what the KK claim.

Many of you mentioned your economic status, and some of you appear to be among Obama’s despised one percent. His depth of innumeracy and his ignorance regarding the basic factors in wealth creation allow Obama the easy out: grandstanding in order to arouse voters’ envy of the wealthy. In reality, a large base of wealthy citizenry is the best antidote to economic uncertainty for the rest of us and for prosperity as a nation. Obama is deeply lacking in integrity when he incites envy even as he enriches himself without ever creating or producing anything. Those divisive tactics in the name of vote-grabbing have done our commonweal great harm which will not easily heal even after he is mercifully gone.

At any rate, we have a deep bench in the business class amongst our readers and that reassures me. More than one fellow claimed education that ended at the high school level but who went on to create thriving businesses which in turn employ other people. If there is one thing we need to stop doing it is processing more government workers through our corrupt diploma mills. What our world wants is more mechanics and plumbers and jacks-of-all-trades. Things fall apart and there is a growing shortage of folks to fix them.

The Baron made a chart for me so I could easily read all the responses. I was going to quote some of you — the funny, the moving, the amazing — but in the end it seemed that “Anonymous” is there for a reason. You risked exposing your lives and you need protection from the grasping Klassekampen Kids. I will tell you, however, that I’ve kept the chart and I read it when I’m feeling down. It never fails to move me, and often it moves me to tears as the wonder of your variety sinks in. There is a kind of grace in the summation of those pages of lives.

The old aphorism about an ill wind is certainly proved true here. The hate-filled demagoguery is overshadowed by the depth of our readers’ lives. Thank you for telling us.

As usual, the Baron will follow tomorrow with Day Two of the Fundraiser. And I’m contemplating the content of Day Three. Exposing socialists is like shooting fish in a barrel — I’ll attempt something more positive…something that goes against the grain of what “Everybody Knows”…

The tip jar in the text above is just for decoration. To donate, click the tin cup on our sidebar, or the donate button. If you prefer a monthly subscription, click the “subscribe” button.

Local politicians as well as members of the Dutch parliament were critical of the way Amsterdam police handled the Sharia4Holland demonstration on the Dam last Saturday (see last night’s report). Reacting to the criticism, police have now arrested the Islamic zealot who threatened the “Roman dog” Geert Wilders.

In other news, managers of some of Europe’s largest funds are divesting themselves of euro-based assets, in anticipation of a possible Eurozone crash. Meanwhile, after Greek depositors withdrew an estimated 25% of their money from banks, Greek police warned the general public that withdrawing their money was a bad idea, since it would then become more vulnerable to theft.

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

Thanks to C. Cantoni, Fjordman, Insubria, JD, JP, Steen, VladTepes, 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.

The following news video from Swiss TV describes the increase in violent crime that has accompanied a large increase in the number of asylum-seekers in Switzerland. Predatory criminal gangs of North African origins — some armed with bazookas — have become part of the landscape in some cantons.

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

Below is the accompanying article from Tagesschau, also translated by Hermes:

Special police units against criminal immigrants

The number of asylum seekers increased more in 2011 than it has in the past nine years. Criminality also increased. Various cantons have therefore taken measures.

The increase of asylum-seekers was 45% in 2011 — a total of 22,551 persons, primarily from North Africa, sought asylum in Switzerland. The numbers in countries with a makeup similar to Switzerland’s are considerably lower. In The Netherlands the number was 11,500 last year, in Norway 7,500.

The cantons have responded to this increase with special police units. In the canton of Geneva, for example, an anti-criminal brigade was created because theft increased by a third in the inner city.

Armed with bazookas

However, the president of the cantonal justice system and police directors says to Tagesschau that these special units are not enough. The length of the asylum procedure, which now lasts for four years, should also be shortened.

According to observations from Juerg Noth, the chief of Switzerland’s frontier surveillance commandos, as reported in the Sunday issue of NZZ, cross-border criminality has also added (to the problem). The perpetrators are mainly French with a North African immigrant background. The gangs are loosely organized and always act “aggressively and with no consideration at all”. They use assault weapons, submachine guns and bazookas.

Transcript of the video:

00:01		The Geneva canton. The anti-criminal brigade created one month ago is
00:06		the answer to the rising number of criminal cases, mainly in the town centre where
00:11		thefts have increased by a third. Those involved in these criminal acts
00:16		are in most cases immigrants.
00:20		‘The goal is to prevent crime in the streets. We have concentrated on the inner
00:25		town, and also conducted operations outside. We are present also in trams,
00:30		because thefts had increased in them. The presence of our brigades
00:35		was able to stop robberies.’
00:38		In spite of this, only a small number of thieves can be identified.
00:43		The lack of papers makes it harder to catch criminal
00:48		asylum-seekers.
00:51		Hans Juerg Kaeser, chief police and director of justice, knows the problems
00:56		the cantons have regarding criminal asylum-seekers. But special
01:00		units are not enough to bring the situation under control.
01:04		‘This element – that one can now bring small-time criminals under
01:09		surveillance, and eventually catch them when needed – this is an element
01:14		which one can see, but this is not the answer to the impotence
01:18		which is felt here continuously.’
01:21		The main problem for the cantonal police directors are the
01:25		extremely long asylum procedures. They are in average four years
01:29		long. We could take the example of The Netherlands.
01:32		‘In that country 70% of procedures are processed
01:37		and decided upon in eight days, and we must really make a
01:42		big step in this direction here in our country.
01:47		In order to accelerate asylum procedures, specific
01:50		measures are to be on hand until summer. Even if Switzerland
01:53		is politically more complex than The Netherlands.

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

As a first-generation American growing up in Florida as part of a small Catholic ghetto, I have no childhood memories of Memorial Day. Back then the population of the state was about two percent Catholic. That bit of demographic trivia sank in at the time because it explained why I knew every single “Catholic” house on the streets I walked between home and school; such knowledge was just part of the experience of being ‘different’.

The nuns who taught at our school were evenly divided between off-the-boat young Irish women and native-born Americans. The latter were more at ease and often less harsh. The former were often scared, and they suffered horribly in those black wool habits. Looking back, I am in wonder at the level of their courage.

The priests in our parish were another matter, though: Irish immigrants, every single one of them. Our monsignor was originally from Dublin and he personally traveled to the seminary in Maynooth to recruit many a newly minted priest for work in Florida. I’m sure he painted a rosy picture while leaving out the most salient fact. So when August arrived, those poor fellows often became quite sick when high summer lay like a weight over all of us (air conditioning as an assumed ‘right’ didn’t arrive until I was in high school).

[My mother endured her own trial by fire when she arrived in Florida, straight from Canada in late May and eight-plus months pregnant with me. Conceived in Toronto, born in Florida — I would still prefer Canada. By the age of ten, the weather and intellectual climate seemed so abysmal I was already considering how to get out of Dodge. I knew we could never afford college (and no one told me about scholarships), thus the only other way over the fence I could imagine was marriage to a nice Yankee. Which I did on turning twenty.]

We never avoided Memorial Day commemorations — being part of America was important — but since this one fell outside the boundaries of the school year there were no opportunities for the nuns to put us to work making iconic flags or memorizing relevant poetry for the occasion.

As I recall it wasn’t an observed holiday where my mother worked, either. Her boss was from Lebanon and he barely looked up for Christmas, much less something as nebulous as Memorial Day. Thus Mother never felt deprived of something she’d never known. Had it been a big deal in Florida, she’d have made sure we went through all the rituals and ceremonies — becoming an “American” was forefront in her mind when it came to our education.

[St. Patrick’s Day was another story — and a big conflict with the Boss from Beirut. With two children to support there were lots of things Mother gave up without complaint, but properly celebrating Saint Patrick’s Day wasn’t one of them; she simply didn’t show up for work on March 17th. Instead, she took a bus to the city to attend noon Mass and reminisce a little with Monsignor Meehan about “home”. From there she walked to a restaurant she’d frequented back when she worked in town. In those old days she’d never minded working on St. Paddy’s. She could attend Mass easily enough, and her co-workers always made sure a favorite local restaurant served corned beef and cabbage. For many years afterwards, that same restaurant always featured C&C on the menu. Instead of a check for her meal, the owner would, with great ceremony, present Mother with a small pot of shamrocks to take home.]

Yes, yes, I know. This is supposed to be about Memorial Day. I’m getting there. Trust me…

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It wasn’t until I moved to New England that the day appeared on my family calendar, along with others such as Patriots’ Day. But even there it had a different tone than it does today. My in-laws, along with many other families, took the last Sunday in May to clean up the graves of their dearly departed. My father-in-law, whose people originally came from further north, told me the original name for this was Decoration Day. He thought the particular day — last Sunday in May — was originally chosen because by then the weather was likely warm enough to allow for spending considerable time outside cleaning up the accumulated detritus of the previous year. Dead flowers were removed, headstones were scrubbed, and the immediate areas around the graves were planted with fresh annuals or vines. Thus the nickname for Vinca minor — “cemetery vine”.

The gradual change from “Decoration Day” to “Memorial Day” began in the North after the Civil War. So many families lost their sons to preserve the union of the states — the numbers of new graves given over to those young men were a startling reminder of how many had perished in battle over the span of four gruesome years. The Union lost more soldiers in all — 360,222 — but the total casualties for both sides have remained greater than all our other war deaths beginning with the Revolutionary War and going on through Vietnam — somewhere between 650,000 and 700,000 all told.

The majority of those killed in battle were young. In other words, we often lost “the best and the brightest”. We lost fine young men who would never marry or sire children. War levels and reduces the strength of any country’s gene pool, and given the relative size of the losses in the Civil War (comparing them in toto with the size of the population at the time), we clearly damaged our genetic heritage.

On Memorial Day we are once again reminded of the cruel irony of Arlington Cemetery. It began as a hasty potter’s field for the Union dead near Washington D.C. The decision to establish this place on the immediate grounds of General Robert E. Lee’s home was deliberate. The strategy, bodies next to the rose bushes, was a psy ops move: surrounding an old and cherished estate with the poorest of the Union dead — those soldiers whose families in the North could not afford the fees required to have their sons carried home by train — was designed to humiliate. This is also true of the destruction of the forests and outbuildings of General Lee’s home.

In time, Rebel soldiers’ remains came to be interred at Arlington, but their final resting places were permitted no show of honor. In fact, there were explicit instructions to “ignore” these graves during ceremonial occasions. The ignominy was so pointedly mean-spirited that most families of those Confederate soldiers buried at Arlington removed their sons’ remains to safer grounds.

Anyone who has been to Arlington Cemetery knows how vast it is, but the average TV viewer watching some wreath-laying ceremony has no idea of its history, or that it goes back to George Washington himself. We don’t teach our children history any more, so America’s cultural, institutional memory is becoming ever more denuded and poverty-stricken. And that’s how some people want it.

Arlington Cemetery is a monument to the brutal expenditure of so many bright futures. All the men who never returned home, all the families that never got made, all the inventiveness and intellectual energy buried there is an incalculable loss for our country, and for anyone who might have benefitted from what these men never had the chance to create, invent, build, or solve.

Look at that picture at the top of this post. It is an image from the Pacific theatre in World War II It is a photograph that grabs my attention. I study it sometimes, trying to grasp what it meant to those boys. Hungry most of the time, scared to death, and a million miles from home. So young, so brave and so irretrievably lost.

War is more than merely “hell” — it is a demonic destruction of the future. No, I’m not a pacifist. Yes, there are worse things than dying. But like any Monday morning quarterback, I have unanswered questions for those officers who seemed to sacrifice lives to their own ambition.

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There is something we can do, however small our recompense to the dead. I hope our readers will chose one of these projects as a way of paying attention to the future:

• The Iron Men Foundation
• Gold Star Moms
• National Military Family Association

If you know of other groups (I lost the list I’d collected last week for this post), please leave a comment or send an email. I’ll add yours to the list.

In his latest essay, Paul Weston examines the ongoing process of Islamization in Britain as realized through the financial subversion of its universities by the Saudis and other wealthy Muslim donors.

The British once built glorious structures in our varied colonies and did so in order to project imperial power architecturally. But after we retreated within our own borders and invited in the Third World, so we in turn are now subjected to foreign statements of imperial power. This is very apparent in the ancient university city of Oxford, home to the massive Oxford Islamic Centre.

This building occupies the majority of its three-acre site and appears to have been constructed slap-bang in the middle of the colleges’ sports fields. The dreaming spires of Oxford have some serious competition here — the architectural projection of Islamic supremacy simply has to be seen to believed (go to Google maps and enter “Kings Mill Lane, Oxford.” The lane serves as the northern border of the site).

The Oxford Islamic Centre gained Royal approval recently, a landmark event celebrated by Prince Charles, a noted admirer of Islam who is apparently impervious to the reality of Islam’s core tenets. The Islamic centre, built at a cost of some £75 million, was funded by a number of hard-line Islamic states, most notably Saudi Arabia.

Between 1995 and 2008, eight universities — Oxford, Cambridge, Durham, University College London, the LSE, Exeter, Dundee and City accepted more than £235 million from Muslim rulers and those closely connected to them.

The donors tell us the Islamic Centres of British Universities merely want to promote an understanding of Islam, but Prof Anthony Glees, a man who has studied the rise of Islamic extremism in our universities, suggests their real agenda is rather different. He argues that they promote an extreme ideology and act as a form of propaganda for the Wahhabist strain of Islam within universities. They push, he says, “the wrong sort of education by the wrong sort of people, funded by the wrong sorts of donor”.

If this is true, why on earth are we allowing these Islamic centres to built, and why on earth are we allowing the construction costs (and one assumes the associated back-handers) to be funded by people and states linked to supremacism and terrorism?

Saudi Arabia has spent around 90 billion petro-dollars funding the growth of hard-line Wahhabist ideology in the West, yet Saudi Arabia is also a country that bans crosses, Bibles and any Christian teaching within its borders. Our much vaunted multicultural tolerance seems to be just a one way street to oblivion. Or, to put it more bluntly, we are being played for Dhimmi fools.

Fifteen of the nineteen 9/11 terrorists were Saudi nationals, and Hilary Clinton has since stated that Saudi Arabia is the single biggest financial contributor behind the rise of Islamic extremism. In the politically correct newspeak so beloved of our recent political leaders she said: “it has been an ongoing challenge to persuade Saudi officials to treat terrorist financing emanating from Saudi Arabia as a strategic priority”.

In 2007, the Guardian reported that a survey conducted by the Policy Exchange think-tank found extremist literature in a quarter of the one hundred mosques and Islamic institutions it visited, including London Central Mosque in Regent’s Park, which is funded by Saudi Arabia. The literature advocated violent jihad, murdering gay people and stoning adulterers, with most of this hateful, homophobic and seditious material produced by agencies closely linked to the Saudi regime.

Britain’s Muslim schools are also being slowly taken over by hard-line Saudi Wahhabist ideology. According to the Daily Telegraph, 68% of Muslim schools investigated were linked to Islamic fundamentalists, and this does not take into account the 2,000 madrassas around the country which are attended by some 80% of Muslim schoolchildren outside school hours. The madrassas teach the Koran in Arabic, along with the usual hateful Islamic propaganda about “wicked” Western society and Jews.

By the time Muslim children enter university, they have already been taught to hate their host culture with a passion, so it should come as no surprise that a study of five years of lectures on politics at the Middle Eastern Centre at St Antony’s College, Oxford, found 70% were “implacably hostile“ to the West and Israel, nor that 30% of people convicted for al-Qaida-associated terrorist offences in the UK had attended a British university or institution of higher education.

Think-tanks have highlighted a succession of extremist speakers invited to deliver lectures unopposed at university Islamic societies, including University College London (UCL). Westminster University recently elected students with links to the extremist group Hizb ut-Tahrir as president and vice-president of the student union.

In 2011, secret files obtained by The Daily Telegraph and WikiLeaks disclosed that at least 35 terrorists held at Guantánamo Bay were indoctrinated by extremists in Britain. The leaked documents, written by senior US military commanders, illustrated how Britain effectively has become a crucible of terrorism over the course of two decades.

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, president of University College London’s Islamic Society between 2006 and 2007, tried to blow up a flight to Detroit on Christmas Day 2009 by ingeniously designing a pair of exploding underpants. Whether this was actually possible is something wiser minds are pondering, but the intention to cause mass murder via novelty underwear was certainly foremost in engineering student Umar Farouk’s propagandised mind.

Killing in the name of Islam is rather popular amongst “British” students. In 2008 a YouGov poll found 33% of Muslim students in Britain believed killing someone in the name of religion to be justifiable. This was exhibited recently at a conference held by the Atheism, Secularism and Humanism Society at Queen Mary University in London, when a follower of the Religion of Peace threatened to kill various debaters if they dared to mention Mohammed.

The Independent reported it thus: “The same man then began filming the faces of Society members in the foyer and threatening to hunt them down if anything was said about Muhammad, he added that he knew where they lived and would murder them and their families…on leaving the building, he joined a large group of men, seemingly there to support him. We were told by security to stay in the Lecture Theatre for our own safety.”

Queen Mary’s has no plans to hold another conference on themes Islamic. They have submitted before the religion of Islam — just as intended. The word “Islam” translated from Arabic to English actually means “submission” — a practice avidly carried out by British University Chancellors who turn a blind eye to such Islamic shenanigans, and the British police, who apparently provided “reassurance” to the debating society but lacked a certain amount of courageous get-up-and-go when it came to actually finding and arresting the bearded gentlemen who made the death threats.

The British government has also submitted before Islam. The rather lightweight Home Secretary Theresa May (who also doubles up as Minister for Women and Equality…) has stated that some forty British universities have been radicalised. Ms May said: “I think for too long there’s been complacency around universities. I don’t think they have been sufficiently willing to recognise what can be happening on their campuses and the radicalisation that can take place. I think there is more that universities can do.”

The British government has at least tried to something about this, despite their utter uselessness being so all-encompassing as to be almost endearing. Under their new “Prevent” strategy, our clueless leaders promised to spend more on identifying threats in prisons, universities and the health service…and to ensure that no more cash was given “to organisations that hold extremist views or support terrorist-related activity of any kind”.

Not a bad notion really. The public funding of people and organisations wishing to kill us smacks of foolishness at the very highest level, but the British government is made up of the usual half-witted suspects when it comes to recognising the danger posed by the Religion of Peace. No one should be shocked to discover therefore that Theresa May has admitted via the Guardian: “the money from the £63 million anti-extremism budget has been given to groups that promote hardline beliefs.”

Such is the derisory state of tragicomic, Dhimmified Britain. Hard-line Islamic states that outlaw Christianity in their own countries are allowed to pour hundreds of millions of pounds into Britain in order to promote supremacy, jihad, terrorism, homophobia, misogyny and anti-Semitism.

University Chancellors look the other way because they are either afraid or have benefitted handsomely financially. The British police look the other way as well, through fear of being called names. And the British government financially rewards the extremists through fear and/or criminal incompetence.

Unless things drastically change in the very near future, I think it is safe to say Britain is on the point of no return. Accelerating Muslim demographics, blatant Islamic fundamentalist propaganda and a supine indigenous population guarantees our imminent destruction. All the powers of the state seem to work with those who wish us harm and against those who wish to expose Islam for what it really is.

Britain is an absolute multicultural madhouse these days, but it can still be saved. If you are angered by the details in this article, then please consider joining or funding British Freedom, the only non-racist political party in Britain prepared to stand up to both Islam and their treacherous, Britain-hating leftist allies like the UAF and other such immoral, depraved and disgusting organisations.

Paul Weston is Chairman of the British Freedom Party.

Previous posts:

2007		Jan		22		The Week Britain Died
				26		Britain’s Dystopian School Children
		Feb		2		Questioning the Sanity of Liberals
		Mar		1		Multiculturalism — Merits and Debits
				31		Is European Civil War Inevitable by 2025?
		Jun		26		The Big Story That Isn’t
		Aug		10		An Open Letter to Fellow Europeans
				24		A Brussels Perspective
		Sep		12		Democratic Europe R.I.P.
		Nov		2		The Coming Third World War
				21		Cool War — Warm War — Hot War: Part 1
				29		Cool War — Warm War — Hot War: Part 2
2008		Mar		27		The Face of Moderate Islam in Britain
2009		Feb		9		Wilders in Wonderland
				13		Who is Lord Ahmed?
				25		Temporary Peace Trumps Freedom of Speech
		Jul		1		Muslims, Mosques and Mosquitoes
				2		Islam, the BBC, and Young Children
				8		Review of “A Bridge Too Far”
				17		Socialist Propaganda in British Education
		Oct		15		Multiculturalism Has Destroyed the British Police
2010		Mar		16		Ethnically Cleansing the English
		Oct		7		Banana Republic Britain
				30		“We Will Hold You to Account”
		Dec		5		The Metaphorical Front Line of Islam
				5		The West Needs to Wake Up
				7		Land for Peace — Or Land for a Terror State?
2011		May		20		Why Is This Not Treason?
		Jun		1		One Week in the Death of Britain
		Jul		11		The Multi-Layered Betrayal of Britain
				29		The BBC, Breivik, the EDL and Islam
		Aug		7		Down’s Syndrome Babies, Sarah Palin and the BBC
		Sep		5		Clone These Men!
		Nov		27		The Totalitarian EU Tightens Its Grip
		Dec		6		One Rule for Them, One Rule for Us
				7		Muslim Misogyny, Feminist Indifference
				13		Interview with Paul Weston
2012		Jan		10		Racism and Media Double Standards in Britain
				13		How To Destroy A Country — Part 1
				14		How To Destroy A Country — Part 2
				15		How To Destroy A Country — Part 3
		Feb		20		“We Ran Out of Other People’s Money”
		Mar		1		NER Interview with Paul Weston
				1		Unite Against Freedom!
				2		Form Letter to MPs Who Endorse Unite Against Fascism
				2		Transforming Britain Into Lebanon
				12		Paul Weston: The CAN Interview
				13		Representing the Ideology and Law of Sharia
				15		Does Moderate Islam Really Exist?
				28		Muslim Paedophiles, Feminists and Future Civil War
				30		George Galloway, Islam and Britain’s Future
		Apr		12		Paul Weston at the British Freedom Party Meeting
				23		On Being English
		May		2		Celebrating Multicultural Madness
				12		Muslim Rape, Liberal/Left Complicity

Fjordman’s latest essay has been published at the British Freedom website. Some excerpts are below:

In the spring of 2012, the British Freedom Party officially began working together with the English Defence League (EDL) street protest movement. Two senior EDL leaders, Tommy Robinson and Kevin Carroll, joined the Executive Committee of British Freedom. The two organizations will cooperate, but nevertheless remain separate.

As British Freedom declares in its mission statement, “The objectives of the British Freedom Party shall be to defend and restore the freedoms, traditions, unity, identity, democracy and independence of the British people, to establish full sovereignty over all our national affairs by restoring the supremacy of the British Parliament, to withdraw from the European Union, to promote democratic British patriotic principles, to promote the social, economic, environmental and cultural interests of the British people and to preserve and promote the ancestral rights and liberties of the British people as defined in the British Constitution.”

At the website Gates of Vienna, British Freedom leader Paul Weston, a brave and eloquent English patriot, picked a random week in May 2011 to provide a detailed description of the utter financial, moral, legal and cultural rot that is modern British life. Law-abiding citizens are fleeced by thugs as well as their own government, while immigrant gangs spread fear in the streets. The UK, like most Western countries today, has virtually abandoned its border controls and is being flooded by a tsunami of global mass migration. Britain has become a place where real crime goes nearly unpunished whereas thought crimes against the Multicultural order are dealt with harshly.

Paul Weston warned back then that “Although it just a snapshot, it outlines a country, a government and a people whose civilisational timeline is now measured in years rather than decades or centuries. We are no longer serious about the serious matter of survival. We have nowhere to turn and no one to realistically represent us. Britain, as Lawrence Auster constantly reminds us, is a nation of the living dead.”

[…]

The American columnist Samuel T. Francis labeled this “anarcho-tyranny,” a toxic mix of virtual anarchy in the streets combined with near-totalitarian repression. It describes a situation where the authorities have lost any semblance of control over public safety, but try to prevent citizens from protecting their own lives and property.

The state is everywhere, and it is nowhere at the same time: useless when hostile ethnic groups move into your cities and push you out, but always eager to regulate the fat content of your yoghurt. It is totally incapable of upholding your country’s borders, which have broken down under a tidal wave of immigrants who often have no legal right to be in your country, yet still charges very high taxes in spite of its persistent failures. It is impotent when faced with violent tribes harassing your sons and daughters, but quite capable of removing your cultural heritage from the school curriculum and giving your children lessons on the sex life of transvestites.

The English author George Orwell was one of the most insightful analysts of the totalitarian mindset. When Orwell published his dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four in 1949 he meant it as a warning. British ruling elites today read is as an instruction manual. That is why we need the British Freedom Party, to restore freedom to the British population.

Britain was once at the forefront of political liberty. With the help of British Freedom, it can become so once more.

Read the rest at the British Freedom website.

For a complete archive of Fjordman’s writings, see the multi-index listing in the Fjordman Files.

The mujahideen of North Africa are again threatening the Iberian Peninsula. They have renewed their vow to reclaim the lost territory of al-Andalus (Islamic Spain), a goal that has obsessed the Ummah since Islam was driven from Iberia in 1492.

Our Spanish correspondent Hermes has compiled a report on the topic based on Spanish-language sources. It focuses on a terrorist group called Ansar al-Din, which is now planning attacks in Spain.

Ansar al-Din Targets Spain
by Hermes

Snapshot of the website in which the group threatens Spanish cities


Spain has been threatened again by jihadists from Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb

Ansar al-Din controls Mali and has gained territory thanks to the weapons stolen in Libya

Ansar al-Din, a Salafi jihadist group which maintains an alliance with Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, has again pointed out Spain as top target. Ansar al-Din controls the north of Mali and Timbuktu. It has become powerful by of being one of the groups which obtained the largest quantity of weapons from the Libyan arsenal after the fall of Khadafi. The threat against Spain came with a photo in which the Salafists showed boxes of weapons and explosives with the seal of Misrata, stolen from the headquarters of Khadafi

Ansar al-Din (the defenders of the Islamic religion) has published a statement which was intercepted by the State Security Forces, and in which they point out four Spanish cities as targets: Granada, Valencia, Seville and Cordoba. The text of this statement explains that “they want to free these four cities which were once governed by Muslims”, and “restore Al-Andalus”.

Apart from the marked targets, which once again are Spanish, this group gives concern to the police because it has become powerful through acquiring so much weaponry from the Libyan arsenal after the fall of Khadafi. The threat against Spain arrived with a photo which the Salafists took of themselves on a truck full of explosives stolen from the headquarters of Khadafi in Misrata.

Terrorist photographed with the weapons stolen from Misrata


The State Security Forces engaged in the fight against the radical jihadists give total credibility to this new statement from Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb. After having intercepted and studied it, the conclusion remains the same: Spain is one of the top targets of the terrorist organization, and that AQMI remains one of our most significant menaces.

For her part, the government representative in Andalusia, Carmen Crespo, did not give much importance to this issue and pointed out that “what the government is concerned about is to work in order to ensure that the Islamist groups will not be able to take action, either in Spain or the rest of Europe.”

In this way, she said that the State Security Forces “investigate and are very aware in order to detect any cell or person involved”. According to her, this statement “has little to do with the reality in the country”, because “Spain is Spain, and here everybody has his/her place, because we welcome people, but what’s clear is clear.” Finally, she remarked that the government “is working to prevent the actions of the radical Islamist groups, and work is being done regarding investigation and prevention.”

AQMI still has its headquarters in Mali

AQMI still has its headquarters in Mali. The lawless desert of Mali is the main bastion of the Salafists, who have been maintaining their bases and training camps there for decades. There’s concern that AQMI has rearmed itself with weapons and explosives from Libya, which they have begun to use in countries such as Nigeria and in attacks against Christians. The route they followed in order to carry the weapons was Libya-Niger-Mali, and they were moved by road on trucks.

The missiles and the explosives arrived in Mali thanks to the Tuaregs and the mercenaries of AQMI, who carry the military material in trucks under the disguise of security convoys in exchange for money. Some trucks were intercepted in Niger in their way to Mali with missiles and explosives

Recent police reports to which radio SER had access point out that this branch of Al Qaeda in North Africa has among other things “long range missiles and a very destructive kind of military explosive known as semtex”. This is a plastic explosive of general use preferred by terrorists because it is extremely difficult to detect and easy to obtain. It is one of the best methods to blow up planes, and one of the big challenges of AQMI, because just 250 kg of this explosive are enough to destroy a civilian plane. Between 1975 and 1981 Libya bought more than 700 tons of semtex, which are even now in good condition.

Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb continues to be very active in Algeria, Mauritania, Niger and Mali. According to recent police reports, their goal is to continue to spread in the Sahel and the rest of countries in the Maghreb

We know some details about the Islamic organization which has expressly threatened Granada

Ansar al-Din (The Followers of Faith) is an Islamist group created in Mali, which wants to impose Sharia law in that territory. Its leader is Ag Ghaly, a prominent figure of the Tuareg uprising in the 1990s in Niger and Mali, and who is accused of having links to Al Qaeda in Maghreb.

The leader of Ansar al-Din, Ag Ghaly


The group declared in March that it had gained control of the northeast regions of Mali, near Algeria. France asserts that Ansar al-Din executed 82 soldiers captured in that zone of the country, and described their tactics as “characteristic of Al Qaeda”.

The BBC stated back in April that the group was beginning to implement their interpretation of Sharia in the city of Timbuktu. In a radio interview with its leader Ag Ghaly, he announced his intention to make it compulsory for women to wear the veil, to stone adulterers and to mutilate thieves. He drove the Christian population of Timbuktu to leave the city.

On May 4, Ansar al-Din was accused of having burned the tomb of a saint in Timbuktu, a site which had been declared a world heritage site by the UNESCO. The explicit threat to Granada and other Spanish cities such as Valencia, Seville and Cordoba is the first threat of international scope made by the group, which up until now limited its actions to gaining control of Mali.

Sources:

• “Un grupo terrorista vinculado a Al Qaeda quiere “liberar” Granada” — Ideal
• España vuelve a ser amenaza de los yihadistas de Al Qaeda en el Magreb Islámico — Cadena Ser
• “Ansar al-Din controla Malí y ha escalado posiciones por el arsenal robado de Libia” — Cadena Ser
• “¿Qué es Ansar al-Din?” — Ideal

More on Ansar al-Din:

• YouTube
• New Middle East News

Fjordman’s latest essay has been published at FrontPage Mag. Some excerpts are below:

One of the experts on contemporary Islamophobia subpoenaed in the trial against Anders Behring Breivik is the Norwegian writer Øyvind Strømmen. Prior to this case he was virtually unknown, but he has enjoyed a tremendous career boost thanks to Breivik’s evil acts, and is now hailed as a “leading expert” on the Counterjihad, a claim which triggers roars of laughter from those who actually know this movement. A lucky opportunist, Strømmen sells his books by labeling me a dangerous “Fascist.” He says very little about real problems caused by mass immigration to Western countries, but a great deal about how evil any opposition to mass immigration is.

Strømmen also had an article published in the prestigious American magazine Foreign Affairs, a journal published by an influential foreign-policy think tank, the Council on Foreign Relations. The CFR usually supports the line that Islam is not a problem in itself, only certain “militant Islamists.” Writing there about what he termed “violent Counter-Jihadism,” which he linked to Breivik’s mass murder, Strømmen concluded that “It is crucial that law-enforcement authorities and intelligence agencies better understand the true relationship between the words and ideas of Internet-based counter-jihadists and the real-world violence they seem to have inspired.”

The official line promoted in the mainstream media, for instance by Mina Hauge Nærland in the newspaper Aftenposten, is that I am an “extremist” whereas Strømmen is an expert on extremists. It is unclear how he earned this title just by reading a few blogs, however. I’ve seen former US President George W. Bush multiple times on TV. Does that make me an expert on Bush, to be consulted by the press and the police?

[…]

As usual, during this conference including the police authorities and the government, Strømmen highlighted me personally as representing one of the greatest threats Europe has faced since the Nazis. He did exactly the same thing at the Labor Party’s own conference about extremism in early 2012. Strømmen has also lectured members of the important government-appointed 22 July Commission, established to look into the causes of Breivik’s mass murder on 22 July 2011, about the supposedly large potential for violence among anti-Islamists.

Minister of Justice Grete Faremo has repeatedly emphasized the need to counteract so-called extremism on the Internet and wants the police to concentrate more resources on surveillance of this dangerous movement. Her policy closely mirrors the views of Øyvind Strømmen, who has earlier called for having more online police patrols on controversial websites and blogs. Kristin Halvorsen of the Socialist Left Party, a Minister in PM Jens Stoltenberg’s left-wing coalition government, has launched an Internet campaign against racism, xenophobia and Islamophobia.

Strømmen has previously voiced the view that Breivik’s mass murder was the logical conclusion of the postings on independent websites such as Gates of Vienna, Tundra Tabloids or Vlad Tepes blog. Western authorities unfortunately seem to agree with this viewpoint.

We can expect further clampdowns on those who voice any opposition to Islamization or Multiculturalism from the very same people who love the Muslim Brotherhood.

Read the rest at FrontPage Mag.

For a complete archive of Fjordman’s writings, see the multi-index listing in the Fjordman Files.

A controversy has arisen recently in Austria about a statement made by its defense minister, Norbert Darabos. Mr. Darabos managed simultaneously to be dismissive of the Iranian nuclear threat and disparaging about Israel’s attempts to defend itself.

JLH has translated two media articles on the topic, and our Austrian correspondent AMT sends this introduction:

Norbert Darabos, a member of the Croatian minority in Austria, leads a tough life. The historian, who calls himself a staunch anti-fascist, never wanted to end up as the minister of defense, especially since he skipped military service as a conscientious objector.

Darabos has always been extremely loyal to his party — the Social Democrats — and as the party’s secretary general he was in charge of the election campaigns back in the mid-2000s. His dream was always to be appointed interior minister, but fortunately this post went to the Conservatives. So he was appointed minister of defense, a man who had never held a weapon or seen the inside of a tank. Never mind that. The ministry of defense held promise nonetheless for Darabos. Who cares that he had no clue? Nowadays it is not important to have a clue, but to hold power.

So far, it’s been a rollercoaster ride — downhill all the way. Blunder after blunder has accompanied him. However, because the rest of the government is just as incompetent as he, his incompetence almost turned into competence. Only just.

Last week, Mr. Darabos seemingly felt the need to attack Israel’s foreign minister Lieberman. What bit Darabos to induce him to say these words will never be known. However, apart from the Austrian government’s immediate distancing, one wonders what would have happened if Heinz-Christian Strache had had the gall to utter this. (Strache, by the way, instantaneously rebuked Darabos and sided with Israel, saying that Darabos’ words were “an affront to Israel, a country with friendly ties to Austria and whose existence is jeopardized by external foes.”)

God help Austria if Darabos were to become the next foreign minister, as some MSM commentators are currently predicting.

The first piece is an op-ed from Die Presse:

If the Defense Minister Wants to Defend His Country, He Should Resign on the Spot

by Christian Ortner

Norbert Darabos is downplaying the second holocaust which Iran officially announced this past weekend. Such a person cannot stay in office here.

With admirable candor this past Sunday, the official Iranian news agency “Fars” removed all doubts about what Iran thinks of its Jewish neighbors in the Near East.

The agency quotes chief of the general staff, General Major Hassan Firuzabadi: “The Iranian nation stands by its intention to completely annihilate Israel. The Zionist regime is a cancer which must and will be excised.”

There are two possible interpretations. Either Mr. Firuzabadi was the victim of a terrible translation error — which Europe’s anti-Semitic Left constantly maintains in such instances — and actually was joking with “Fars” that he would love to have wild sex with a luscious young Israeli woman on the beach at Tel Aviv.

Or… the official agency translated correctly what the highest military figure of the Islamic regime of Iran told his numerous listeners: that — as President Ahmadinejad has always said — the Islamofascist dictatorship would really like to carry out that Holocaust which they otherwise deny happened.

Luckily, Israel can breathe easy. The reason for that is Norbert Darabos, a social-democrat military strategist famous in all of southern Burgenland. Just one day before the general major’s pronouncement of the desire to extirpate Israel, Darabos declared in this newspaper:

“And besides, Israel apparently puts an emphasis on external enemies like Iran, to distract from domestic social problems.”

So no doubt there was a sigh of relief from the Lebanese border in the north to Eilat in the south of the “Zionist entity.” For Mr. Darabos apparently knows better — much better — than the Iranian chief of staff what Teheran’s military leadership wants: just kidding, so to speak. Iran’s officially announced intention to militarily (i.e., with nuclear weapons) obliterate the Jewish state, is for Darabos a kind of feint by the Israeli government, to “distract from social problems.”

If it should be the case that Darabos does not know what the Iranian regime intends better than the regime itself — which does not seem so likely — then there is the question of what is driving the man to expose the Republic of Austria, to which he is sworn, to international ridicule. Unlike Günther Grass, who recently fared badly after a similar, socially unacceptable noise given off in the Israel-Iran context, the 48-year-old defense minister cannot plead senile dementia, even if his defensive remarks sound that way.

It is also improbable that Darabos merely wants to pander to the anti-Semitic milieu of SPÖ immigrant voters. That task is taken care of masterfully by SPÖ politicians like Omar al-Rawi, who likes to attend Hamas demonstrations in Vienna. But perhaps he is on vacation right now and Darabos had to fill in temporarily.

The second article, which describes the response of an Austrian Jewish organization to the Darabos affair, was also published in Die Presse:

IKG (Israeli Cultural Community): “Darabos Has Problems With Live Jews”

May 24, 2012

Oskar Deutsch, president of the cultural community, demands an apology from defense minister Darabos for his “uncivilized Israel bashing.”

[Vienna/Kufstein] Actually, Oskar Deutsch, the new president of the Israeli Cultural Community, did not want to comment at all on the affair. Now, however, since Norbert Darabos has doubled down on his “uncivilized Israel bashing” and pushed his criticism of the Simon Wiesenthal Center to ridiculous extremes, Deutsch told the Presse. he could no longer be silent.

“It is high time for the federal chancellor and vice chancellor to bring the defense minister to his senses.” Darabos should apologize and retract his insulting comments.

In the Presse on Sunday, the SPÖ politician had described Israel’s foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, as “unbearable.” Such a lack of respect, said Deutsch, was quite unusual and unseemly.

“Ignorant and cynical”

He is even angrier about Darabos’ “downplaying the Iranian nuclear threat.” To accuse the Israeli government of creating an image of Iran as an enemy in order to distract from domestic social conflicts was simply tawdry. “Darabos is either ignorant or cynical or both,” said the president of the cultural community. Apparently the defense minister did not know how dangerous Israel’s situation is. Not long ago. the Iranian chief of staff Hassan Firouzabadi had threatened Israel with total annihilation. “We Jews have learned to take such threats seriously,” said Deutsch.

The IKG head does not, however, regard the defense minister as an anti-Semite. Darabos should be commended for his intervention against right extremist activities and for the accounting for the NS past in the army, said Deutsch. “But apparently he has problems with living Jews.”

In the Jerusalem Post, Shimon Samuels, director for international affairs of the Simon Wiesenthal Center had accused Darabos of “modern anti-Semitism” and demanded his resignation. On the verge of an international exercise on response to catastrophic events, the defense minister called the accusations on Thursday absurd. “I am an anti-fascist of the first water.”

According to The New York Times, the Obama administration hopes to arrange a Yemen-style transition to a new government in Syria. The U.S. president reportedly plans to outline his idea to Vladimir Putin when they meet next month, suggesting that President Bashar Assad might be eased out of power without the complete destruction of his regime.

In other news, unemployed Tunisians are desperately trying to cross the border into Algeria, where they hope to find work. The would-be immigrants cite the lack of job opportunities and the “absence of government” in their home country as reasons for their migration.

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

Thanks to Barry Rubin, C. Cantoni, Derius, DS, ESW, Fjordman, Insubria, KGS, McR, Steen, WM, 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.

I can’t file this article under “cultural enrichment”, because the Metropolitan Police make no reference to the ethnicity of the perps in their statistics on rapes reported in their jurisdiction. However, given the explosion of Third-World immigration to Britain in the last few years, and given the statistical data on rapes in other major European cities, it’s hard to believe that there is no connection between the celebration of diversity in London and the dramatic rise in reported rapes.

What makes this BBC article interesting is the almost word-for-word correspondence between the explanations given by police in London with those coming out of Oslo — that is, the increase is due to the greater willingness of women to report rapes. It’s as if the Metropolitan Police were reading their script from a playbook translated directly from the Norwegian.

If they continue to follow the Scandinavian script, they may start to cite global warming as a causative factor in the increased incidence of rape in London.

Recorded Rape Up 53% in London

There has been a 53% rise in recorded rape in London over the last four years.

In the financial year 2008-2009, there were 2,177 reports of rape to the Metropolitan Police.

But by 2011-2012, that had jumped to 3,334 cases. Some 667 prosecutions have been completed, 369 of which were successful.

A Metropolitan Police spokesman claimed the rise was due to victims feeling more confident about coming forward.

He said: “We believe this rise in recorded crimes is partly due to an increase in victims coming forward to report rape and sexual assaults.”

The statistics are from the Crown Prosecution Service.

The CPS said a further 661 people have been charged from the year 2011-2012, with court cases yet to be completed.

‘Unacceptable’

Yvonne Traynor, chief executive of Rape Crisis South of London, said: “Women feel more confident they are going to be believed.

“There are more support services around and more a culture of doing everything we possibly can to get the bad guys off the streets.”

Meanwhile, a new poll suggests 41% of women in London aged 18-34 have experienced sexual harassment in public spaces over the last year.

The YouGov survey of 523 women, commissioned by the End Violence Against Women Coalition, asked about experiences of unwanted contact or attention, such as wolf-whistling, sexual comments, staring, or exposure of a sexual nature.

Some 21% of women of all ages reported unwanted attention, while 4% had experienced unwanted touching.

Coalition co-chairwoman Prof Liz Kelly said: “Our survey shows that sexual harassment in London is extremely common.

“We need investment in public campaigns on transport and elsewhere saying this behaviour is unacceptable.”

Hat tip: Derius.

Earlier tonight we posted a subtitled video of a Sharia4Holland/ Sharia4Belgium event at the Dam in Amsterdam. Below is the accompanying article from De Telegraaf, kindly translated by our Dutch correspondent H. Numan. The translator’s comments are enclosed in square brackets:

Sharia4Holland lashes out

Geert Wilders filed a complaint, according to the police. On Friday a speaker [for Sharia4Holland] on the Dam in Amsterdam called Wilders “this dog of the Romans” with whom “we will deal with” once The Netherlands has become a Muslim state. Also he advised to take warning “from the case Theo van Gogh”.

Sharia4Holland wants to implement sharia law in The Netherlands.

Police in Amsterdam-Amstelland and the public prosecutor started on Saturday their investigation of statements made by members of Shariah4Holland.

Earlier, on Sunday, VVD faction leader in Amsterdam Robert Flos critiqued the police for their performance [rather the lack of] during that speech at the National Monument. On AT5 TV station he said it was strange that the police did not act when speakers made death threats towards Wilders, which according to Flos [and the law] is a criminal offense.

The police did arrest a bystander, who tried to act. They rough-handed him while taking him away. Flos said he was shocked that “next to our monument such a message of un-freedom is preached”. According to AT5, Flos will ask questions of Mayor Eberhard van der Laan.

Note from the translator: “Un-freedom” is not a word, but I can’t translate it any better than that.

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

The German security services in North Rhine-Westphalia have been infiltrated by a Salafist, who was assigned the task of observing his… ahem… extremist co-religionists. This fundamental breach of operational security has caused a stir in the German intelligence community.

Below are two articles from the German media about the case. The first, from Der Spiegel, was translated by JLH:

Security Services Uncover a Salafist in Their Own Ranks

May 6, 2012
North Rhine-Westphalia

The ministry of the interior classes the case as very serious: According to a newspaper report, security services in North Rhine-Westphalia have uncovered an Islamist in their own ranks. The police officer is said to be an adherent of the Salafists — and had clear access to secret documents.

Essen: As a police officer, a suspected adherent of Salafism is said to have had access to secret papers of the state’s security services. The West German General Newspaper reports that the Duisberg police commissioner was suspended. In the interior ministry, the case was classed as “very serious,” because the 31-year-old man was used in the security services and deployed, for example, to observe radical Islamists.

He had worked for the security services for half a year and had been assigned to the Salafists, among other things, It was easy for the man to gain access to confidential documents. The newspaper reports that the interior ministry is now examining whether the man’s inside knowledge could have consequences for pubic safety, and whether practical countermeasures would be necessary. The policeman’s connection to the Salafists only came to light when he turned up at an information booth which was displaying Salafist hate writings.

According to the report, a disciplinary action was brought against the officer. He was accused of placing Islamic sharia above free, democratic, constitutional law.

“Extremists have not lost anything with the police and the security services”

North Rhine-Westphalian interior minister Ralf Jäger said: if the accusations should be confirmed, the policeman would be let go. “Extremists have lost nothing so far as police and security services are concerned,” the SPD politician explained. The police president of Essen, Stephania Fischer-Weinsziehr, said she was expecting the man’s discharge from his civil service appointment. According to the report, this would be the first work prohibition for a Salafist in Germany.

The radical religious group had attracted attention recently through street battles in Bonn with sympathizers of the right-extremist party Pro-NRW. Further, an internet video circulated in which a jihadist praises the violent protests of Salafists and calls for the murder of opponents of Islam and journalists.

Police and security services also showed concern at a project of the Salafists, in which the radical Islamists are distributing free copies of the Koran. Salafists — which about 5,000 Muslims in Germany declare themselves to be — claim to be the defenders of Islam who must protect their religion from infidels.

Picture caption: Salafist with copy of Koran (in April in Offenbach). The intelligence services are alarmed.

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Sign in picture: Read! in the Name of Your Lord Who Created You. (At least one cabaret comedian has noticed that the German imperative form is also an English plural…)

The second article, from WAZ, was translated by Hermes:

Suspended Islamist police agent knows secret files

Essen/Düsseldorf — A Salafist police agent may have kept his brothers in faith under surveillance. He could also have had access to confidential documents. The agent from Duisburg has meanwhile been suspended from service. The interior minister Ralf Jaeger is now examining the implications of this case.

A presumed enemy of the state with direct access to secret information from the O.P.C. (Office for the Protection of the Constitution): According to the investigations of the WAZ media group, the suspended agent, an inspector from Duisburg called Ali K., could have been dealing with extremely confidential documents for months, till it was noticed that he leaned towards Salafism. The interior minister Ralf Jaeger (SPD) ponders the implications of his level of internal knowledge for public security, and whether countermeasures are needed. Yesterday a spokesperson said that this was a “serious case”.

No wonder. This false prophet had been working for half a year for the interior ministry. In section 6, the mobile observation group of the O.P.C. He had periodic contact with secret procedures. The minister remained silent regarding which documents, which crisis scenarios and which strategies he knows about. Answers will be given in parliament only after investigation is complete. Later on it will be evident who profited the most from the observations of Ali K.: the investigators or the targeted subjects.

Arranged for the brothers in faith

According to sources for the WAZ Media Group, some of his operations could have been counter-productive. The inspector with Salafist tendencies may have been commissioned to deal with his brothers in faith. According to police insiders, surveillance of the Islamic scene was one of his tasks, but there are no official comments on this. Rumors are heard behind the scenes about keeping “snoopy attitude” a taboo in the future; the compulsory security checks for the applicants could be tightened.

As reported, Ali K. was busted while registering information booths in which, besides copies of the Quran, Salafist inflammatory pamphlets were also being distributed. The 31-year-old said that his beliefs were his own private matter. He personally knows hate preachers calling for violence. He was suspended from duty a month ago. A disciplinary procedure is in progress against him. The chief constable of Essen, Stephania Fischer-Weinsziehr, has taken into account the “dismissal from his activity as a civil servant”. This would mean the first case of a Salafist being banned from his job in Germany.

The dismissed agent has made no declarations yet. His lawyer is also silent. Insiders foresee a coming legal struggle regarding official issues.

The interior minister wants to take drastic measures. “If the accusations prove to be true, he will be fired”, Jaeger said to WAZ media group.

Hat tip: Tiedar.