The war in Mali was briefly eclipsed by the hostage crisis in Algeria, but has now returned to the headlines. Speculation abounds as to whether Qatar may be backing the Salafist rebels in North Mali. Other analysts blame the Obama administration for the crisis. Russia has offered its support to French troops in Mali, but according to recent polls, most Germans do not want their country to become embroiled in the conflict.

In other news, hundreds of disgruntled Chinese workers in a factory in Shanghai held about twenty of their managers hostage for several days. The workers were angry over a strict two-minute rule on bathroom breaks and other injustices. When the police intervened, the managers — more than half of whom were Japanese — were released.

Meanwhile, a truckload of brown cheese caught fire in a tunnel in Norway, causing extensive damage and forcing the closure of the tunnel for several weeks. No one was injured in the incident.

To see the headlines and the articles, Click “Continue reading” below.

Thanks to C. Cantoni, CSP, Fjordman, Insubria, JD, Jerry Gordon, JP, LS, Steen, The Observer, 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.

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The following op-ed by Hanne Nabintu Herland concerns the Norwegian government’s persistent soft spot for the Palestinians. It was originally published in Aftenposten, Norway’s largest newspaper, on January 15th, 2013, and has been translated by the author.

Naïve Checkbook Diplomacy
by Hanne Nabintu Herland

Torgeir Larsen, a junior minister for the Norwegian Labor Party, admits in Norway’s largest newspaper Aftenposten on December 28, 2012, that Norwegian authorities closed their eyes to the realities of the Middle East. Too often they thought they were in the service of stability, but later found out that was not the case.

Regardless, this acknowledgement of Norwegian naïveté must lead to tangible changes in foreign policy in order to be of real value.

The junior minister asked me what I meant by my leading article on December the 20th (“In bed with the enemy”) in which I stated that Norwegian checkbook diplomacy is de facto supportive of terrorist organizations that display significant intolerance towards Christians, Jews, gays or other minorities who are not considered “sufficiently Islamic”.

Let’s take a look at the statistics: Norway is one of the smallest countries in the world, and one of the largest contributors to the Palestinian Authority (PA) and others, with annual donations of over 700 Million NOK. Especially since the current left-wing Labor government took office in 2005, the donations have exploded. What are these sums spent on?

Recently the remuneration for suicide bombers was tripled. The Hamas terrorist who killed 30 Israelis in 2002 by now receives 20,000 NOK a month, according to The Times of Israel last September the 9th. Those who have carried out the worst attacks against innocent civilians receive the highest pay.

Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center figures from 2005 show that Palestinians have conducted 25,770 terrorist attacks, 147 suicide attacks leading to 1,100 dead Israelis and 7,500 wounded between 2000 and 2005. Fatah conducted 214 acts of terrorism in 2003-2004 alone, according to 2005 Terrorism Review.

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Many more foreign hostages than originally reported were taken by the Al Qaeda terrorists at the Amenas gas plant in Algeria. The Algerian government says that 100 out of 132 were freed, and some sources say that 30 or more hostages were killed. The British government offered the Algerians manpower, equipment, and expert assistance to expedite the resolution of the crisis, but was refused. American, British, and French nationals are thought to be among the dead.

In other news, the latest figures from Angola indicate that at least 250,000 Chinese nationals have migrated to the country. The Angolan government says that work permits were issued for the Chinese to assist with development projects.

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

Thanks to Andy Bostom, C. Cantoni, DS, EG, Insubria, JD, KGS, Mary Abdelmassih, Paul Green, 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.

As a follow-up to Tuesday’s post about the majority-minority public schools in Oslo, the following brief account reports the latest statistics on the cultural enrichment of schools in Austria. Vienna is the most fully enriched location, and seems to be in roughly the same situation as Oslo.

Many thanks to Hermes for the translation from Unzensuriert.at:

Austria — The number of German-speaking primary school students has declined dramatically

The number of pupils with a first language other than German has doubled from 1995 to 2011. This is what the recently-issued “National Report on Education” shows. During this time, the percentage of “monolingual German” children at primary schools dropped from 88% to 76%.

The doubling in the number of multilingual students is evident in virtually all provinces in Austria. In Carinthia, Lower Austria, Salzburg, Tyrol and Vorarlberg, the rise is a little lower, in Upper Austria is a bit higher, and in Burgenland it remained on average. The Styrian province is the only outlier, where the number of children with a different native language has tripled from about 5,000 to 16,000.

Barely any students with German as mother tongue in Vienna

The nationwide statistics conceals the dramatic developments in Vienna, because German is hardly spoken in the primary schools of the federal capital. The district in Vienna where this is most blatantly visible is Margareten, where the proportion of immigrant children has risen to 89 % — that is, 924 out of 1038 children have as their mother tongue something other than German. The districts Rudolf Fünfhaus and Ottakring have a proportion of 80%, Brigittenau 79% and Meidling at least 70%.

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

Our Norwegian correspondent The Observer sends his translation of an article and interview with two respectable high-profile Muslim leaders in Oslo, who have strongly negative opinions about Jews and the worldwide Jewish conspiracy. The Observer notes:

A new trend seems to have developed in the Islamic community in Norway: grab hold of a journalist and speak your mind on issues such as stoning, adultery, apostasy and Jews — and don’t hold back.

This article deals with the twisted views of the imam and the chairman of Norway’s largest mosque. It should also be pointed out that this is the same mosque that the Norwegian police apologized so profusely to last year for the fact that we have freedom of speech in Norway.

The translated article from Dagsavisen:

Imam blames Jews for media coverage

Controversial: Many Norwegians have a negative view on Islam due to Jewish domination of the media. This accusation is made by the imam and by the chairman of Norway’s largest mosque.

We are visiting Central Jamaat-e Ahl-e Sunnat, the mosque with the largest member base in Norway, to talk to its spiritual leader. The mosque was founded in 1977 and currently has more than 5,000 members. The Cultural Center in Grønland in Oslo can accommodate 2500 people during prayers. The spiritual leader, Imam Nehmat Ali Shah is not fluent in Norwegian, so every now and then Chairman, Ghulam Sarwar has to translate from Punjabi.

“But we have the same opinions,” says Sarwar while the imam nods and smiles — he looks both stern and benign at the same time.

The subject of the interview is the relationship between the major religions and Norwegians’ attitudes toward Islam. The Imam begins by explaining that all three heavenly religions, Judaism, Christianity and Islam, are sacred to them. Many people are unaware of this fact, says Sarwar.

Then a statement is made that many will find far more problematic.

“The Jews ruin things”

“Schoolchildren visit the mosque regularly and some of the students may think that we are against Christianity,” says Sarwar. Both of them believe that the school visits confirms their views that Norwegians in general have an inaccurate impression of Islam and Muslims.

“Students, journalists and people like you ask the same questions over and over again — about forced marriage, hijab and whether females can become imams.

“No one can be forcefully compelled to marry in Islam, but parents can assist in finding the right partner, and no, women cannot become imams. People are ignorant because they get their information from the media, and the media only write negatively about Islam. Judaism has a better grip on the media,” says Sarwar.

“Why do the media only write negatively about Islam?”

“Because the media has Jewish roots. The Jews control the media and that’s detrimental. Only a handful of people were behind the movie about Mohammed in the U.S. and they didn’t have a lot of money. So who was financing them, who was backing them?” asks Sarwar, referring to the anti-Islamic film The Innocence of Muslims, produced by a Christian Egyptian Copt living in the USA.

“Anxious people”

“Who are the Jews behind this in your opinion?”

Continue reading →

A big tip of the Bodissey pickelhaube to our commenter Jolie Rouge, who has provided us with a brand new acronym. The occasion was an observation about BBC 17/01/2013 This Week (the link only works in the UK):

Andrew Neil and Michael Portillo are joined by former UN secretary-general Kofi Annan and Alastair Campbell.

Interesting conversation — acknowledging the geopolitical threat to the West.

Note the aggressor is not named other than by geographical location (e.g.) North Africa, Afghanistan and surprisingly the inclusion of Turkey.

Amazingly they manage to avoid the JIM words — Jihad, Islam and Muslim.

I think JIM could have great utility for our enterprise: it’s concise, pronounceable, handy to use, and easy to propagate.

Who will be the first major Western politician (not counting Geert Wilders) to break the greatest cultural taboo of our time, and mess around with JIM?

Tonight’s news feed is unusually fat, due to the inclusion of last night’s items, which were never used because of the Blogger outage.

Yesterday a group of Al Qaeda terrorists assaulted a natural gas plant in Algeria and killed two foreigners while taking 41 other hostage. Today Algerian special forces staged a helicopter raid on the plant, killing a number of the hostages — between six and 34, depending on whose figures you believe — in the process of taking out the terrorists. Among the foreign hostages were American, British, French, and Japanese nationals.

In other news, Germany has begun repatriating its foreign gold reserves, which are stored in vaults in Paris, London, and the United States.

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

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

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

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

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

The following article tells a brief tale about immigrant-on-immigrant violence in Cologne, with Muslims of immigrant background dealing it out and Russian immigrants as victims.

JLH, who translated the piece, sends this brief note:

It shows the attempts by a Turk to protect a Russian family and being killed for his trouble. An example of what happens to the good guys among the immigrants if they don’t toe the line.

The translated article from Quotenqueen:

Dead Thanks to Judicial Coddling

The unwillingness of German judges to lock up unsocialized walking time-bombs already known to the police has claimed a victim in Cologne on New Year’s Eve. Two criminal foreigners, free to terrorize their neighbors despite drug-related and violent crimes, killed a Turkish husband and father who tried to get them to behave. It happened in a sector of the city called Bickendorf — a district notorious for years for immigrant violence and bordering on the thoroughly Islamized Ehrenfeld. There was also knife-play at night in the immigrant milieu of right-bank Cologne-Vingst, where “Antifa” pastor Meurer is collecting for the building of a mosque and reading masses against Pro-Köln. But no one was killed.

The Kölner Express reports:

Ferhat and Cihad are both known to the police. And to the neighborhood of Ossendorfer Weg. “They are always toking, drinking, fighting,” says one resident.

Several days before the New Year, they were seen with a little wagon, loaded down with New Year’s Eve fireworks. They used them to terrorize neighbors, throwing firecrackers up on balconies all day.”

After midnight of the evening it happened, they harassed a Russian family with the big firecrackers. “Aziz from Kulk was only visiting here for the celebration. He wanted to calm down the conflict, stop the youngsters from throwing firecrackers,” one of his acquaintances said.

But the two resisted and struck out at him. There was a serious struggle. Then one of the two pulled out a knife and thrust it twice into the victim’s torso. Witnesses saw the two perpetrators flee.

Because there were so many calls, it was a relatively long wait for the EMTs. Aziz was brought into the ICU, where his condition stabilized at first. On the afternoon of New Year’s day, he died of severe internal injuries.

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

Imran Firasat is a Pakistani ex-Muslim who collaborated with Terry Jones on the movie The Innocent Prophet (watch it here). The Spanish government recently revoked his status as a political refugee in Spain, and he is due to be deported to Pakistan, where he will face the death penalty for blasphemy. There is currently a push to persuade the Canadian government to grant him and his family political asylum.

Mr. Firasat was interviewed recently on Alerta Digital TV. The video below shows the third part of the interview, and includes segments in English of a statement by Terry Jones. Previously: Part 1, Part 2.

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

Transcript:

We are in the midst of a Winter Weather Warning (also known as Crystallized Climate Change) here at Schloss Bodissey. That means I am watching big, fat flakes accumulating on everything — though the driveway is still clear. Prior to that, we awoke this morning to heavy rains. It is our good fortune that there was never any period of transitional ice. Thank heavens!

Why am I talking about the weather, you ask? Because this heavy wet snow may well eventuate in a power outage. Should that happen we would have no way to tell you why when, once again, no one seems to be home.

If the power does go out, I’m confident it won’t be for long. Our rural electric cooperative is exceptionally good at handling these kinds of weather ‘events’; if we do go out, it won’t be for long. And thanks to the generosity of our donors several years ago, we installed a gas cook stove so we can cook and have — thank heavens, again — hot coffee during the outage.

Yes, we are careful regarding the possibility of carbon monoxide poisoning if we were to use the stove for heat. However, given how leaky our storm windows are, I’m not worried.

Here’s what NOAA says:

… Winter Storm Warning remains in effect until 1 am EST Friday…

• Hazard types… heavy wet snow.
• Accumulations… snow accumulation of 3 to 6 inches.
• Timing… late this afternoon and evening.
• Impacts… hazardous driving conditions due to snowfall.
• Power outages also possible due to the heavy snow.
• Winds… north 5 to 15 mph with gusts up to 25 mph.
• Temperatures… falling into the lower 30s by evening.

This Winter Weather Advisory means that periods of snow will
cause travel difficulties. Be prepared for slippery roads and
limited visibilities… and use caution while driving.

The public is encouraged to report snowfall amounts to the
National Weather Service via email at rnk.Skywarn@noaa.Gov

Oh me. I do wish there were a way to magically bring back my grown-up children to the time when they were all about ten years old. What excitement! Lashings of hot cocoa. Wet snow suits and parkas everywhere! Loud laughter at the recall of sleds bouncing over the hidden bumps.

Somehow I’ll bet mothers with children of a certain age aren’t in any such fantasy land as I’ve just constructed. Instead, they’re wondering how long it will be before the roads are plowed and everyone is safely on the road back to their regular routines. And they would be right — I really only want that trip in The Way Back Machine to last for a few hours. I don’t want the extra laundry or the bored bickering, or the wet drippings all over the front hall…yet the memories remain…

Yesterday we reported on a group of young Muslim men who accost pedestrians in certain parts of east London. They insist that their turf is a “Muslim area”, and require that non-Muslims observe the appropriate dress code and the Islamic proscription on alcohol while they are there. The original post included an embedded video taken by the group and posted on their YouTube account.

Since then YouTube has yanked the video, on the grounds that it was “intended to harass, bully and threaten.” However, for the sake of the historical record of these dire times, Vlad Tepes has preserved a (slightly augmented) copy at MRC TV:

As you all know by now, our blog was suddenly removed last night between 8 and 9pm EST for no apparent reason. Blogger never provided any explanation before, during, or after the outage. I assume it was an internal technical problem at Google.

Below is a portion of a mass email I sent out earlier today to dozens of people who had written to us to ask what happened:

Blogger “removed” our blog suddenly last night. One second it was there; the next it was gone. If we had violated their terms of service, we should have received an email, according to their own established procedure. But we received no email.

I retain my “dashboard” account, as does Dymphna. And, as you can see, I still have the gmail account.

There is no “deleted blogs” link on our dashboards, as there should be if the blog had been deleted deliberately through a normal procedure.

Late last night I began the process that one always goes through with Blogger: we posted requests on the help forum. That’s really all that can be done; you can’t talk to human beings where Google is concerned. We actually received a response, which is unusual with Google. Based on the replies, there seems to have been a major problem with Blogger last night. Many other blogs disappeared in the same fashion.

I anticipate that this is most likely a technical glitch on Google’s part, based on the number and types of blogs that had the same thing happen to them last night. But we should know for certain within another day or two.

It’s also possible (but far less likely, in my estimation) that we were taken down for political reasons. If it was a deliberate take-down, we will migrate to another platform with our own domain. We back up the entire blog frequently, so only a few posts will be missing when we restore.

This is all that we know at present. I’ll send out more emails if I find out anything else. Dymphna will also send out Twitter messages.

Thank you all for your concern and support.

Now the blog has reappeared just as mysteriously as it disappeared. No message, no explanation.

All indications are that this was a technical glitch at Google, given how many other blogs were affected, including lots of non-political ones.

It seems extremely unlikely that there was any political component to the outage. Nevertheless, we will continue with our “disaster preparedness” policy, with an eye towards an eventual migration to a secure platform, one that we have complete control over.

Thanks to everyone for all the emails, skype messages, blog posts, Facebook posts, and tweets. It’s gratifying to know how many friends we have!