Yesterday morning (Friday, June 1, 2012), the website of the Norwegian state broadcaster NRK published this feature article:

As you can see, this is a screen shot of an article featuring a screen shot of this blog, Gates of Vienna. The article captured by NRK was posted here the previous night (May 31, 2012). It described Fjordman’s decision not to testify by Skype at the trial of Anders Behring Breivik.

The opening text of the NRK article said:

Fjordman will not testify

Blogger Peder Nøstvold Jensen, alias Fjordman, does not have to testify in the trial of Behring Anders Breivik.

He is in hiding, and does not wish to testify, defense counsel Geir Lippestad said to NRK.

This was simply a rehash of what Hans Rustad had posted at Document.no, a translation of which we posted here. The defense counsel, of course, has spun Fjordman’s departure from Norway as being “in hiding”, rather than “in exile from his homeland, which has become a totalitarian state”.

But that’s Mr. Lippestad’s take, and reflects his own choice — he, after all, has chosen to serve the modern multicultural Norwegian state. He lives in Norway, and earns his daily crust from the oppressive system that drove Fjordman into “hiding”. We cannot expect him to be able to conceptualize the dire condition into which his country has fallen — and which Fjordman has described so aptly in his numerous well-researched essays — much less work to overcome it.

For some reason NRK decided to feature our blog as a source for their article. We were not the first to carry the news — Hans Rustad of Document.no broke the story — but perhaps the editors felt a need to emphasize Fjordman’s “foreign connections”. Or maybe they were engaging in more of the ridicule we’ve heard about — it’s hard to tell from machine translation.

It’s fine with me if they intended to mock and/or discredit us. Do your worst, fellows!

Because whenever you do something like this, the thousands of Norwegians who read your article that morning over their Wheaties later google “Gates of Vienna” and find our stuff. And I know they don’t just read the NRK-featured article, because our page-views skyrocket every time we get one of those norge-lanches. The new readers work their way through our archives — especially the Fjordman posts.

And the ones who are secret dissidents keep coming back. We can tell that because of the comments they leave. Ever since the Breivik crisis last August, Norwegians have been well-represented among our commenters. Virtually every night they leave brief summaries of pertinent Norwegian-language MSM articles in the news feed, and they often participate in the comments on posts about cultural enrichment in Norway.

So the meme propagates, thanks to NRK and Dagsavisen and VG Nett. The Norwegian media have given us a leg up, and we owe them a debt of gratitude for that, communists or not.

Thanks, comrades!

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Most of my regular Norwegian contacts and translators are exiles, like Fjordman. Some of them have left the fjords to escape the stifling political repression that now rules in their home country. Others emigrated for non-political reasons, but once they were out from under the yoke of janteloven, they experienced a sense of liberation from the oppressive Nordic consensus and discovered the joy of thinking for themselves.

It’s not a good sign when the most vigorous and open discussion occurs among a country’s exiles. The fact that there is virtually no public dissent within Norway itself against the consensus — that only exiles engage in it freely — is a sign that Norway has become a full totalitarian state. No gulags, no firing squads — those aren’t necessary. Given the right conditions, the total suppression of officially unacceptable opinions may be achieved without any violence whatsoever.

Mind you, show trials and the local equivalent of Pravda are still required pieces of totalitarian furniture, as Circus Breivik has demonstrated all too clearly. You can’t run a totalitarian state without the customary rituals and litanies.

This blog did not set out to become a haven for Norwegian dissidents. It just ended up that way, over the course of five or six years, as disgruntled Swedes and Norwegians took an interest in the translations, the news stories, and the free-ranging discussion in our comments. We accumulated more tipsters, more translators, and more correspondents, and the whole thing snowballed. By the time Breivik did his deadly work, we had become a prime target for elite Scandinavians who longed for an excuse to suppress their exiled dissidents.

I’ll leave it to the experts to determine whether Breivik was weaponized in advance to target the “Islamophobes”. From our point of view, it doesn’t really matter — the effect would have been the same in any case. The media came down on us like a ton of bricks, and if I had had any career left, I would have lost it as a result.

But we’ll just keep on doing this as long as we can — until Obama or someone like him has his way and Europeanizes the United States.

We have become the equivalent of Radio Free Norway. It’s not something we wanted or intended, but the job fell to us anyway. We beam our signal into the oppressed fjords and snow-covered uplands so that ordinary Norwegians can realize that yes, there is another point of view besides the one they are spoon-fed by NRK and Dagsavisen.

That their homeland and heritage are worth preserving and protecting.

That not only is there nothing wrong with having such a goal, but that striving for it is in fact a noble and worthy enterprise.

That saving their culture is a moral necessity for all Norwegians.

The same is true for the rest of us in our own homelands, of course. We really need a Radio Free Everywhere.

And someday, when things go sideways here, we may need a Radio Free America. Or, in a post-federal time, Radio Free Virginia.

And maybe Radio Free Texas, broadcasting from an abandoned oil rig out in the Gulf…

It’s important to point out that Gates of Vienna is far from the only outlet beaming the truth into Norway. Among other stalwarts, we have Vlad Tepes, Tundra Tabloids, Europe News, Snaphanen, Politically Incorrect, and numerous other blogs and websites, all broadcasting the words of exiled dissidents into the totalitarian heartland.

Thanks to the largesse of King Mohammed VI of Morocco, Muslims in France will now be able to complete a luxurious mosque and madrassa complex in Blois.

Here’s the story from Alerta Digital, as translated by our Spanish correspondent Hermes:

Alerta Digital succeeded in getting access to one of the checks issued by king Mohammed VI: Morocco is financing the building of mosques on French soil

According to Article 220 of the Moroccan criminal code, Christians who proselytize in the Moroccan kingdom face penalties of up to six years behind bars, churches are closed, and foreign Christians are expelled if they dare to display their faith publicly. Moroccans have no right to convert to another religion, and according to the constitution, a Christian is not allowed to acquire Moroccan citizenship.

Meanwhile the building of mosques in France and their control by Morocco (and other Muslim countries) increases. This is about a territorial conquest of the zones under Muslim colonization which are multiplying mainly in France, but also in cities in other European countries.

After the building of the great mosques in Clermont-Ferrand and Saint-Etienne, which were financed by Morocco, now it is the turn of the town of Blois. A mosque and a madrassa in being built on a 1500 square meter plot of land. The king of Morocco donated €787,000 to help finish the building of the complex.

The building of the “Bilal cultural and religious centre”, begun two years ago, had been at a standstill. The first €600,000 collected by the regional Muslim community had been entirely spent. On the occasion of a private visit by the King of Morocco to one of his numerous properties in France, he was handed a report explaining the details about the project and the difficulties the project was going through. The king’s reaction was positive and he donated the money needed to complete the project

More than 30,000 Muslims live in that region: Moroccans, Algerians, Turks and Africans of different nationalities. The foundation stone was laid on December 11, 2009. The mosque will have an area of 1500 square meters, including a prayer hall of 450 square meters and a minaret 9.20 meters high.

Spring Fundraiser 2012, Day Five


DAY FIVE?? Oh my gosh. This one is flying fast! The Baron has already sent me my first few bunches of thank you notes from previous days and I’ll be continuing with them soon.

Not to bore you (at least not as much as it bores me), but my latest malady is a new one for me, and I’m hoping the distributed intelligence of our readers will have some experience with this, and especially will have a few tricks they’ve learned to cope with it. At my last checkup I mentioned to the doctor that I experienced brief dizziness at times when I got up too quickly from a lying position. She gave me a handout for an exercise to use. The paper said to do this every day until the dizziness went away.

Being a (mostly) compliant patient, I did the exercise — easy peasy.

You sit on the bed with your head turned to the right at 45 degrees (or so). Then you lie back with a pillow already in place to support your shoulders but placed in such a position that your slightly turned head is flat. If I remember this correctly (the page is in the other room), you then turn your head to the left, ninety degrees. When the room stops rotating, you turn your whole body onto your left side, wait for the vertigo to pass again, and then get up. The last step wasn’t on that page but here’s how it goes… [vomit into nearby bowl]. The unscripted part [in brackets] is what followed the final step — “get up” — or at least it did for me. This “Epley maneuver” is extremely unpleasant and I don’t plan to try it again.

Yes, of course I googled it. The best description I could get was benign paroxysmal positional vertigo. Anyone have suggestions beyond not moving my head that way?? And, yes, I will make another appointment to see if I have to go through the test routine.

Now, back to our regular programming — i.e., the fundraiser. Y’all are being generous and I’m being very grateful. Which you will hear personally… it just takes longer for me to do them than either of us might like.

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The subject of Diversity/diversity is huge. It’s also hugely contentious since the political fault line in our culture goes right through the middle of this subject and the definitions vary wildly. Socialists, statists, progressives, etc., mostly line up with Diversity, though not all of them, especially when it comes to immigration. And on the side of diversity-from-the-bottom-up — the growing, changing dynamic version — are the conservatives, some libertarians (those who aren’t pro-immigration, at least) and the “moderates”. I haven’t ever met one of that last category, but I see the word used enough that I doubt they belong with the first group.

One of the most disingenuous notions floating around in the minds and hearts of today’s socialists is the idea that there could/should be an “international community”. In some ways this utopian hope, as reductionist and simplistic as is, speaks to their optimism, if not to their understanding of basic human nature. Despite the fact that the term is an oxymoron and could never work (except as a totalitarian scheme) it still speaks to the ancient hope we all nourish for tranquil times, for the days when the lion will lie down with the lamb.

Conservatives are realists. We know the lion would need a lobotomy to be able to do that with any regularity. But the hard fact that tranquil times arrive only after the human spirit departs is difficult for perfectionists to accept. For them, the “good enough” is deplorable, and we must continue to strive for perfection despite the dismal record of such attempts in the past.

Ever since 9/11 the real conservative view has hardened into a demand for border security. It is a demand that is all too often ignored, but that doesn’t mean we won’t stop making it — and paying the price for our vigilance. That price includes shunning by those who think they know better how to arrange the world.

Jerry Gordon’s new book, The West Speaks, is a collection of his interviews with some of “the watchers on the ramparts of the West”, brave individuals who have stepped forward since 9/11 to counter the particularly specious form of global “community” as laid out by Islam in its tenets on the Ummah. An Islamic international “community” would be the death knell for any form of authentic, vibrant community as Western civilization understands that term. One has only to look at all the polities in which Islamic Law dominates to know they are but the Ummah writ small: murderous, tyrannical, and without that spontaneous creativity which is the hallmark of any genuine community. For the most part Islamic countries, except those awash in petrol wealth, are backward, poverty-stricken hellholes. Even the wealthy ones aren’t places a person who values free speech would want to live in. Turkey could be considered on exception at the moment, although as it moves back and peels away from its Western veneer, it too will sink further into persecution of minority groups within its borders, more widespread poverty, creeping superstitions, and growing numbers of illiterate women. When women can’t read or write, the family founders.

It is not just Islam which is pushing for this fantasy global community. Fashioned from the leftovers of Marxism, political elites in the EU and camp-followers in American academia and media have their own half-baked pie-in-the-sky fantasies about immigration and outmoded economic policies as the solutions to our problems of endemic debt, economic “unfairness”, and mind-numbing poverty. For these intractable issues, the answer offered by the politically naïve is often a sickly sea, a universal solvent which would erase those ugly nation-state borders.

This free lunch comes at a terrible cost to civilization. One of the “observers” Jerry Gordon interviewed has lived long enough to see why a nation’s sovereignty is foundational to its continued existence.

Richard Rubenstein grew up in the then-German enclave in New York City. In the 1930s he saw the Nazi flags flying from the windows. And he discovered that he was indelibly Jewish. His family were secular Jews. As a boy Dr. Rubenstein thought this was a fungible thing, that he could become something else instead. He ended up in the Unitarian Church and was considering the ministry, having come to feel that religion was important. And then it happened: he ran into the wall:

One day, I got a letter from somebody I had met whose father was the executive secretary of the American Unitarian Association. He said, “You are going to make a fine minister, but you need to change your name from Rubenstein to one that is less Jewish, more Anglo-Saxon.” That sort of hit me like a lightning bolt. I went home and thought about it and said to myself, “I’m not going to do this, change my name.” First of all, I would have spent the rest of my life worrying about being found out. Secondly, all of a sudden, I began to worry about ancestry and I thought, “I can’t rat on my background.”

That must’ve been a painful realization back then, but he’s had many decades to absorb it since, so his story sounds matter-of-fact. I doubt that it was so at the time.

Gordon leads Dr. Rubenstein through the retelling of the steps that led him to Judaism — he says he’s a Conservative rabbi but a Reform Jew at heart. Eventually, Dr. Rubenstein got his Master’s Degree in Christian Theology from Harvard and went on to receive his Doctorate in the History of Religion from Harvard’s graduate School of Arts and Sciences. The thesis he wrote became Religious Imagination: Study in Psychoanalysis and Jewish Theology (Brown classics in Judaica), which was translated into French and won an Italian literature prize in 1977.

I chose Dr. Rubenstein’s interview because his political philosophy partially reflects my own. He derides the idea of an “international community”. So do I.

When Jerry Gordon asked him about his political philosophy, Rubenstein said:

In the world of politics, I’m a Hobbesian.

Thomas Hobbes believed that originally men lived in a state of nature in which there were no rules. Inevitably, the very strongest prevailed and the weakest served them or fell by the wayside. Finally, in order to protect themselves, men agreed to delegate whatever powers they had to one sovereign who would protect them and who would prevent them from behaving towards each other as if they were in a state of nature.

For example, if my neighbor and I have a dispute over where my property line ends and his begins, we don’t take out guns and settle it that way. We believe that, through the sovereign state, there are impartial institutions which will decide whether my claim or his is right. However, Hobbes also says something else. He says, “Sovereigns always live in a state of nature with regard to each other.” That is, between nations, there are no permanent, fixed rules. Nations may agree on rules, because it is within their interest to do so, but the same nation that makes a rule can break a rule. There is no such thing as an international community. There are only states with different interests which sometimes conflict…

That is not a traditionally Jewish view. At least not a liberal American Jewish view. But Rubenstein blames that blindness on the long history of the powerlessness of Jews in Europe. They had no living experience of sovereignty.

When Gordon asks him about his own “core Jewish values”, he counters with this:

I think the idea of Jewish values can be a trap because for 2,000 years Jews had no experience being the masters of their own destiny and had no experience with what that meant, what its responsibilities were. As Israeli Ambassador to the U.S., Michael Oren said in an Azure article, “They had no experience with sovereignty.” If you have an army, if you have enemies you know are out to destroy you, then having abstract values that are unrelated to the actual context of danger in which you live does yourself a disservice and one which is potentially suicidal.

Well, there you have one person’s opinion about the phenomenon Americans have learned to call “the suicidal Jew”. They vote for policies which endanger their safety because they’re stuck with those ageless, abstract values.

Rubenstein continues:

Now, I believe that Jews should practice justice, but what I mean by justice is to give each man and each group its proper due. This is fundamental.

That means that if you have an enemy who is out to kill you, you don’t necessarily have to kill him, but you have to do whatever is necessary to defang his power so that he cannot kill you.

Nevertheless, I do not believe, for example, in doing more than you have to against an enemy. I don’t believe in gratuitous killing or torture.

In that same article, Oren describes how David Ben Gurion, Israel’s first Prime Minister, sat by himself on Israel’s first Independence Day, wondering whether the people understood what they were getting themselves into, whether they understood what sovereignty meant. He was afraid that they didn’t. He knew that neither Martin Buber nor the German-Jewish professors at the Hebrew University understood sovereignty. Sovereignty means that you possess an army and, as the German sociologist Max Weber put it, “The sovereign state is that human community that successfully claims the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force within a given territory.” Ben Gurion understood that insight when he forcibly disarmed the Irgun militia at the start of the new State of Israel in 1948. Ultimately, the conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians is over the question of who possesses a sovereign monopoly of the use of force. Such a monopoly cannot be shared. [my emphasis — D]

To me, the most basic Jewish value is to survive with dignity as an individual and as part of a people. However, learning from tradition can be a trap…

Make no mistake about it. I have enormous respect for Jews who exercised restraint under conditions of powerlessness. They had no other choice then. The way I used to put it to my students in class was, “If a person comes along and says, ‘You dirty Jew boy,’ I’m going to go after him, but if five people come and surround me and say that, I’m going to have to learn to hold my temper.” That was the situation of Jews for almost 2000 years.

What he is describing here I have heard some people term “underdogma” — the almost knee-jerk response to root for the underdogs. Anyone who has stuck with the New York Mets through thick and thin has experienced this phenomenon, underdogma.

You can see it, too, in the cultures which penalize individuals for standing out too much, for striving. In Scandinavian countries it’s a kind of mindset, janteloven:

Generally used colloquially as a sociological term to negatively describe an attitude towards individuality and success common in Scandinavia, the term refers to a mentality which de-emphasizes individual effort and places all emphasis on the collective, while discouraging those who stand out as achievers. The Cultural Theory of Risk defines egalitarianism, prevalent in Scandinavia, as a mindset aversive towards rules but benign towards group unity.

No wonder we have such communication problems. That mindset is the antithesis of Americans’ most obvious characteristic, being “ornery”. The Gadsden flag, “Don’t Tread on Me” is an early symbol of this attitude. You see it displayed often at Tea Party rallies. Come to think of it, I wonder if the Tea Party has a Jewish division yet? I doubt it: there’s not an Irish division, either.

As Jerry Gordon leaves Dr. Rubenstein, he asks about the latter’s legacy. At the age of 86 (in 2010), he wasn’t willing to settle for a legacy, saying he was too busy to consider it. Like many of us, he worries about Islam’s supremacist ideology.

It is good to meet someone whose ideas on sovereignty are based on the vivid experience of its absence. It is those who have been threatened with losing it who most value what many socialists would throw away in the name of a failed ideology.

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Yesterday’s ornery donations came in from:

Stateside: California, Georgia, Ohio, Texas, Virginia, and Washington

Near Abroad: Canada

Far Abroad: Australia, Croatia, Denmark, Israel, Norway, and the UK

My deepest thanks go out to you. May your orneriness continue to serve you well.

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.

Irish voters gave their strong approval to the EU fiscal treaty, with 60.3% voting in favor of the pact that aims to solve Europe’s financial woes. Across the Atlantic, the unemployment rate rose to 8.2%, causing the stock market to drop by 2%.

In other news, in a recent poll half of Britons say they would prefer that the Prince of Wales step aside in favor of his son William, the Duke of Cambridge, as the next in line for the throne of Great Britain.

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

Thanks to C. Cantoni, Caroline Glick, Fjordman, Insubria, JP, Steen, 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.

We’ve reported in the past about Imran Firasat, the apostate from Islam who now lives in exile in Spain. His petition to ban the Koran in Spain has aroused the ire of Islamic zealots both in Europe and in his home country, Indonesia.

The campaign against him has escalated to the point where the lives of his children are being threatened. Below is a report from MinutoDigital, as translated by our Spanish correspondent Hermes:

Islamist threats increase against Imran Firasat and his family

The tireless fight started by the apostate Imran Firasat against totalitarian Islamic ideology has begun to create problems for this citizen with political refugee status in Spain, and also for his children living in Indonesia.

Because of its undeniable informative value, we reproduce the letter from Imran, and the copies of the complaints he filed, and the threats he received from Muslim organizations. In spite of the gravity of the situation, the Spanish authorities did not pay much attention to him, a fact which he reports in the following document:

“I am Imran Firasat from Madrid. Since I arrived in Spain, for six years I’ve been receiving death threats and intimidation involving possible physical aggression from Muslims for opposing the violent ideology of Islam and exposing Mohammed’s filthy character. In recent years I filed various reports with the police and the courts. Up until now I did not pay much attention to the threats.

But now that I’m receiving death threats about my family directly from some Islamist groups in Indonesia, I decided to go to the police on May 13, 2012. At first instance, the police officer told me that I did not need to file the complaint because I did it on occasion before. I told him, “Look, this threat was addressed to my children and I’m very concerned because I received it from an Islamist group in Indonesia called “Majelis e Ulema Indonesia”.” Well, that day the police agent filed my complaint but without allowing me to mention the content of the threat I received:

Next day I received another threat from Indonesia, from an Islamist group called “Front Pembela Islam”, and in this threat they explicitly mentioned the killing of my kids living in Indonesia. I was very worried, and went to the police again on May 16 to tell them about this and file a complaint, but surprisingly enough, I was treated rather badly. They told me that they will not file the complaint because they did it the other day, but then I asked them about the correlation with the complaint filed the other day, because this threat comes from a different group, a very radical Islamist group. They told me that they will kill my family unless I stop fighting against Islam and apologize. But the officer rejected filing my complaint and told me that of course Islamists threaten me if I pick on them. But in the end he unwillingly agreed to file my complaint after I told him that it was his duty, otherwise he would be violating my rights, and that I would bring the issue to the interior ministry. But as you can see from the first and the second scanned complaints, there’s not much difference between them. The second is just the same as the first, only slightly modified.

When I asked the officer on what I should do in order to get police protection, he told me that I will not get any protection because it’s none of their business if I pick on Islamists. I asked him which would be the solution to secure my and my family’s integrity, and he answered that I should close my site and stop bothering Islamists. After having filed my complaint, the officer-in-chief told me strictly to stop coming and filing complaints because it’s my fault if I pick on Islamists.

In conclusion, I want to say that according to the police, my actions against Islamism is not a struggle against terrorism and radicalism, but according to them it’s just bothering Islamists. Besides this, they suggested me to close my site and stop talking against them.

Is this the way we’ll win against Islamism? They discouraged me instead of appreciating my struggle. Is this the way that we’ll keep on dreaming of a radicalism- and terrorism-free world, when our own authorities discourage us?

I only say that I don’t care who supports me and who leaves me alone, I’ll keep on fighting till the world gets free from Islamism. I cannot convince anybody to join me but neither can I be forced to stop unveiling the filth of Islamism and make the west wake up to the threat of a growing Islamism.”

Many thanks.

[See the original Spanish article for facsimiles of the complaints, and a larger screenshot of the email message.]

Molenbeek is a culturally-enriched neighborhood in Brussels. Last night there was a spot of trouble when a young culturally enriched female in Molenbeek declined to remove her face covering for the police, as required by Belgian law.

Notice that after she head-butted a policewoman, she (the Muslima) sustained a concussion and was treated at the hospital — presumably at the expense of the Belgian taxpayer.

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

A full transcript of the video is below the jump:

0:26		At the moment during the control when we needed to see the lady’s face in order to check her through her identity card we found with her,
0:33		the lady gave a headbutt against the female police officer,
0:37		who suffered a broken nose after all the events,
0:40		also some violence was needed to subdue the lady,
0:01		Molenbeek [Brussels quarter] centre yesterday evening.
0:03		Riot officers and neighbourhood workers shield the access to the police station.
0:07		There is commotion because several hours before police arrested a woman wearing a niqab.
0:12		This is a veil that covers all of the face.
0:15		And this must not be worn in public in our country.
0:18		When the police patrol asked the woman to identify herself, she refused.
0:23		Then, the situation spun out of control.
0:26		…
0:43		And finally we could officially identify the lady.
0:47		Even at the police station, the woman didn’t want to remove the veil.
0:50		The officers cut it open with a pair of scissors.
0:53		Then she was brought to a hospital.
0:55		After the headbutt she gave the female officer, she has a concussion.
0:59		In the hospital, she then sent a text message in which she appealed to the Moslem community to take action.
1:06		A group of 25 people came to the police station and municipal reception,
1:10		where they then entered by force and caused some damages;
1:13		they also filmed the events,
1:18		and finally our police staff managed to get them outside,
1:20		but a little later, some 150 people again surrounded the police station.
1:25		The atmosphere remained quite grim until midnight.
1:27		Police have arrested 8 firebrands; 2 of them threw stones at the police station.
1:33		The prosecutor will later decide what will happen with them, and the woman in niqab will later be questioned.

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

The following horror story concerns the impending financial catastrophe in the Eurozone, as arranged by unaccountable bureaucrats for the purposes of engineering the final dissolution of the European nation-state. If you think the little minuet between the Fed and the U.S. Treasury is bad, check out the frantic tarantella now being performed by the ECB and the brand new ESM.

Many thanks to JLH for the translation. The translator includes this note:

This reminds me of Nancy Pelosi saying, “We have to pass it to know what is in it.”

If the Germans are rushed into this, the sky is the limit and the plundering of Europe by its self-appointed elites will begin in earnest.

The translated article from Junge Freiheit:

For all Bundestag representatives and citizens who have still not read the draft treaty for the ESM (European Stabilization Mechanism — the Umbrella), here is a swift summary of the arguments against the enabling law.

Final Warning
by Michael Paulwitz

1. The ESM institutionalizes the breaking of the treaty, intends to eliminate economic laws with floods of billions and is making permanent the politically rubber-stamped dragging-out of the bankruptcy of the failed protective shield.

2. The ESM cements the transfer and debt union and introduces Europe collective bond issues by the back door. Article 21: The ESM can sponsor borrowing “in fulfillment of its tasks,” i.e., financing overextended countries and their banks at the cost of the more solvent ones. The German-French window-dressing argument about Euro bonds is only distraction. The fact is…

3. The ESM removes the ban on central bank financing of national debts — a ban already as full of holes as a Swiss cheese because of the tender of trillions and the buying of bonds by the ECB (European Central Bank). The ESM will become a shadow central bank which is allowed to do everything still formally forbidden to the ECB. The ECB is degraded to a money-printing machine. Reason:

4. The ESM can operate as a supra-national bank. It can make loans to Euro countries (Article 16), subscribe to bonds of Euro countries (Article 17), deal with national bonds (Article 18), re-capitalize banks (Article 15), set up lines of credit for Euro countries (Article 14), establish interest rates (Article 20) and issue Eurobonds (Article 21). The bank license France and Italy intend to issue it would be the icing on the cake. Then — using high yield bonds as “security” — the ESM could supply itself directly and without limit with money from the ECB, to buy bonds and turn them in as security… a never-ending loop. Alternatively:

5. The ESM is a mega “bad bank” and super hedge fund rolled into one. It can buy national bonds that no one else wants; extend non-performing loans to countries no one wants to loan to anymore; like a gamer, use “leverage” to quadruple lending volume. And:

6. The ESM can increase its capital itself, anytime. In fact — Article 10 — by decision of the “governing council.” So Euro finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble’s reassurance that German liability risk is covered is just a lie. He can simply be outvoted. The Bundestag can only say yes and amen. For,

7. The ESM annuls parliamentary budget law with a keystroke. If the “governors” decide that they need money, the states must pay inside of seven days. If one of them fails, the others must compensate. In the end, Germany is the last resort paymaster. When the bill comes due, it will already be too late:

8. The ESM has no clauses for dissolution or withdrawal. For better or worse, we, our children and our children’s children are guaranteeing the debts of others. The carousel will keep on turning until Germany too is broke. Judicial review is off the table:

9. The ESM is above statute and law. State norms, rules of overview and control do not apply to it now or in the future. It is released from the obligations of regulation and licensing for credit institutions (Article 32). No court can arraign or impound it . But it has the right to take legal action against all or any. Not even heads of state enjoy such a privilege. No wonder Schäuble wants to stay on when he was scheduled to become head of the “Euro Group.” The reason:

10. The ESM is becoming a self-service store — not only for insolvent nations but for its own “governors” and staff. They set their own stipends — secretly, of course; they are exempt from national taxes and fees (Article 36) and have immunity from legal prosecution (Article 35), even if they willfully gamble monies away. Fact:

11. The ESM secret cabinet is a putsch against sharing of powers and the sovereignty of peoples. To avoid plebiscites, the ban on collective debt (“no bailout”) in Article 125 is canceled in a “simplified treaty alteration procedure” by means of an “amendment” to Article 136 of the Lisbon Treaty. Result:

12. The ESM stands the legal basis of the EU on its head and contravenes constitutional law and the decision of the federal constitutional court of September, 2011. The ESM law transfers national authority in unprecedented measure to an uncontrollable European mega institution. This self-castration of the parliament can never be legitimately decided without asking the people whether it agrees to the dismantling of its national state.

Photo caption: Storm over Germany: The ESM is doing away with Germany

Update: I’ve made the correction suggested by K in the comments, and another one sent by the translator.

An incident involving firearms occurred today at a welfare office in a culturally enriched neighborhood of Oslo. Our Norwegian correspondent The Observer has translated an article about the breaking news, and includes this note:

This incident just occurred in Tøyen, an immigrant neighbourhood in the downtown region of Oslo. According to a slightly more recent article in Dagbladet (which I haven’t had time to translate) a female eyewitness claims that the man is in his 60s and of foreign heritage. She says that he was arguing loudly with a guard and another man before he fired the shots.

The human torch outside the courthouse a couple of weeks ago had apparently experienced some ‘problems’ with NAV, the social services agency. My bet is that this guy had run into similar difficulties getting his hands on some ‘welfare money’ and that this caused him to take this step.

According to the SSB (statistics bureau), if current trends continue, by 2020 the expenses of the government will be higher than their revenues, which mean that welfare reforms will have to be introduced. And that means no more free handouts for Hassan and Muhammad…

Residents of Oslo: be prepared for more of this in the years to come.

The translated article from VG.no:

Fired shots inside the NAV office in Tøyen

(VG Nett) A man has been arrested after he allegedly entered the NAV office in Tøyen, and fired shots into the ceiling.

Eyewitnesses claim that the gunman took a female hostage when he first entered the building and then made his way further into the premise. The Oslo police have confirmed that they arrested a man at 1.59 pm, but that they are still performing a search of the area.

“It was packed inside the NAV building in Tøyen, when we heard a loud noise. I don’t know what it was, whether it was shot or something else. It was complete chaos, everyone panicked. People were running for cover,” one eyewitness says.

Another eyewitness says that she has been informed that the shot was fired into the ceiling.

The armed police response unit has arrived, another person at the scene says.

“A man came out of the building and told us that there was a man with a gun inside the NAV building. The armed man apparently dragged a woman into the elevator on the first floor. Police have now cordoned off the entire Tøyen centre.”

“There are several armed police officers here at the moment. Several witnesses have informed me that several shots were fired into the ceiling inside the NAV building in Tøyen centre,” freelance photographer Joakim Fjeld tells VG Nett.

“As I was leaving the Co-op store two police officers with shields asked us to leave the area. There were four or five police officers at the entrance to the underground (subway) station. They were armed and were in the process of loading their weapons. They also had a dog with them. There was also an armoured vehicle parked outside with approximately ten police officers inside,” Lana Karasniqi (24) tells VG Nett.

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

Spring Fundraiser 2012, Day Four


We’ve had the usual diversity of donors so far in this quarter’s fundraiser. Australians are disproportionately represented among the people who have clinked the tip cup, which is also normal. Do you think this is evidence of discrimination? Should I file a complaint with a human rights agency? If so, in which country?

Hmm… Maybe at the UN…

What I really go for is a diversity of food. Indian food is my favorite, but I can partake of various other “ethnic” cuisines with gusto. Not necessarily pickled herring and snaps, but a lot of the others. Especially the spicy ones.

Ethnic food is one of the main arguments flung at anyone who has reservations about mass immigration. “Aha, so you like your takeaway kebab, but you don’t like the Asians, eh? You hypocrite!” By that logic, native Brits should confine themselves to bangers and mash, and Americans to fried chicken and potato salad, if they aren’t willing to embrace the full Multicultural monty in all its gorgeous rainbow mosaic of inclusive diversity.

Really, though — how many members of any ethnic group does a major city require in order to have a sufficiency of restaurants offering that group’s fare? We hardly have any Chinese immigrants in our area, but almost every small town has a Chinese takeout, and medium-sized towns often have a dozen apiece. We could keep our annual immigration quotas at a tiny fraction of the current level and still have plenty of ethnic food.

No, the restaurants, like the cultural festivals and inter-communal outreach programs, are a feel-good gloss over the deliberate mass importation into Western countries of a replacement population. All the rest of the foofaraw is just a propaganda smokescreen.

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In any big American city major chain supermarkets carry a wide range of ethnic food, catering to the immigrant groups that form part of their customer base. The selection is usually sparser in rural areas, and here in the Outer Boondocks of Central Virginia that means that the only ethnic food section with more than a token representation is the Mexican one.

All the Food Lion stores in our area stock a fairly decent variety of Mexican groceries. The selection tends to be on the cheap end of the scale, due to the peasant background of agricultural workers who make up the local Mexican population. But it’s the real stuff, and quite a bit of it is imported, in contrast to the Chinese section, which contains a lot of mass-produced American imitations of Chinese food.

I often see Mexicans in the local supermarkets. Late in the afternoon there may be three or four young men, obviously part of a work crew just knocking off from a farm or highway project. At other times it may be an entire family, mom, dad, and kids.

They speak Spanish among themselves, and sometimes the only one in the group who can speak English becomes the designated spokesman to interact with the cashier. Around here there aren’t enough of them to warrant the hiring of Spanish-speaking staff to do customer service.

These are generally working people, rather than welfare clients — although I suspect a lot of them get WIC — and not at all scary or threatening. But they’re not Americans, and the spreading of them all over the country in such large numbers over the past half-century seems a major betrayal of trust by our political leaders.

I suppose that makes me a “racist”, a “xenophobe”, and a “bigot”. And not very tolerant of diversity, either.

I don’t know how all this will end up, so I may as well just wander back to the dinner table and celebrate the diversity of lamb rogan josh with mango pickle and garlic naan. And maybe a bottle of Stella to wash it down.

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A diversity of donors checked in yesterday from the following places:

Stateside: California, Connecticut, Georgia, Texas, Virginia, and W. Virginia

Far Abroad: Australia, Denmark, Finland, the Netherlands, and Norway

I can’t begin to express my thanks for your contributions to this endeavor. Your willingness to support our blog is deeply gratifying.

Note: Dymphna was down with the “vapors” for a good part of yesterday. She’s the one tasked with writing most of the thank-you notes, so if you haven’t gotten yours yet, that’s partly the cause of it. Maybe a good night’s sleep will set her right.

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