Sugar and Spice

Sugar 'n' spiceHave you ever noticed how many good chick blogs there are?

When Dymphna and I were on Tammy Bruce the other week, our hostess remarked that most blogs are by men. I thought about our blogroll, and since then I’ve been paying attention to what I read.

Sure, the Big Three blogs are all by guys. But Michelle Malkin was number one in the Ecosystem for a while — she may still be, for all I know.

Now, the hard-core political junkie type of blogging may be mainly a male preserve. But women are on the scene, too; Amy Ridenour does inside-the-Beltway blogging, and Pundita can’t be beat for foreign policy.

The milblogs, of necessity, are mostly by guys. But women like Air Force Wife get the word out, too.

Picking from our blogroll, you can see a lot of females among the most outstanding blogs: All Things Beautiful, Neo-neocon, Dr. Sanity, The Anchoress, Atlas Shrugs, Fausta, Sissy Willis, and Baldilocks stand out.

We have dames blogging the Counterjihad in Always on Watch, Terrorism Unveiled, and Roncesvalles, just to name three. The Headmistress helps educate us, and The Joy of Knitting gives us the Italian viewpoint in flawless English. Not to mention The Adventuress, Annika, e-Claire, Maxed Out Mama, Neddy, Sue Bob, and Meryl Yourish.

And then there’s Donnah at Florida Cracker, who is in a category all her own. Some blogs are a chore to read (Gotta read it, gotta keep up), and others I go to for information (Gotta get the latest on George Clooney). But reading Florida Cracker is pure pleasure — Donnah both entertains and informs. She finds the most unusual news in the most out-of-the-way places, and is intelligent and witty in the bargain. She says she’s a blonde, but you can’t hardly tell. And she even lets some snips and snails and puppy dog tails creep into her blog.

So let’s hear it for the girls.

When they’ve waxed the floor and rustled us up a mess of vittles, there’s nothin’ wrong with lettin’ ’em hit the keyboard, right, guys?

After the dishes are done, that is.

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UPDATE from Dymphna: Here are some the Baron overlooked. Mainly because I keep forgetting to put them on the template–

Small Dead Animals
(This is just the voice of an ordinary Canadian yelling back at the radio –
“You don’t speak for me.”
)

Villainous Company
(Dyspeptic Marine wife/tech wench attempts to enlighten the great unwashed of the blogosphere while dodging snarky commentary from the local knavery.)

And, of course, Debbie Schlussel.

The Danger of Censorship About Islam

In the comments on one of yesterday’s posts, commenter FluffResponse left the following message:

Last night, I started a thread in the Discuss section of the Swedish site The Local; the thread was called “The Danger of Censorship about Islam”. A poster named Cyberfluff was a bit exasperated at my writings about the dangers of Islamic immigration and asked what I wanted HER to do. I told her I’d be back; and I was, with a multiparagraph essay that seems to have resulted in my being banned from the site. (Note the name of the thread I started!)

Could someone (a) see if the thread and my response is still there; and if not (b) find Cyberfluff (who posts here and there on that site) and ask her to see my response below. Gates of Vienna is a new kind of Radio Free Europe. Thanks.

I went to the thread at The Local mentioned by FluffResponse, and his or her response is indeed still there, but the reader has to click the link and go to page two to see it.

However, to save readers the trouble of doing the extra clicking, FluffResponse’s message is reproduced here in its entirety (being an old fuddy-duddy, I took the liberty of capitalizing certain proper nouns and the personal pronoun):

In response to your request, here are the four things that I want you to do:

(a) Read the anti-jihadi works: the web sites listed earlier (to which you can add Wolfgang Bruno) and an increasing number of books (authors include Spencer, Bawer, Bostom, Bat Ye’or, Fallaci, Ibn Warraq, Trifkovic, and Karsh).

(b) Rediscover what is being lost (and which Islam is threatening to replace, to our detriment). C.S. Lewis and a local church might re-introduce you to Christianity, for example, and with it a desire to take the radical step that native Europeans are not doing: having children and raising them in a stable family, which implies caring about what is happening to your society today and what is likely to happen in future generations.

(c) Find a way to contribute to the anti-jihadi movement. I gather that some of the books that speak to the European experience (from Bawer, Bat Ye’or, and Fallaci) are not always available in Europe, either because they have not been translated or because… well, in Italy, they want to ARREST Fallaci! it would be good if you could militate against those kind of restrictions and help get the word out, perhaps as a translator, perhaps as a columnist; whatever your skills, help the cause of the West.

(d) Support a political party that stands up to Islam. Fjordman (whose writings are here and here) tells a story of horror for Sweden, a country of increasing rape and robbery. (Why do you shrug off the worsening situation for women, as caused by young immigrant males who consider themselves — in keeping with the model for Muslim behavior — to be waging a war?) Fjordman suggests that there is no political party in Sweden that is worthy of support — in France, there is Mouvement Pour La France, for example — but maybe you can help force a debate about immigration. (Alas, you are already in a situation where fulfilling that request will put you in physical danger; but of course, the continued immigration and acceptance of Islam as an equal of Christianity will only make the horror worse.)

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In closing, let me report to you how Fjordman sees it:

“Sweden is a semi-totalitarian country. It’s all about façade. On the surface, Sweden is a tolerant nation and peaceful democracy. In reality, there is massive media censorship by a closed elite that is scared of having a debate about immigration. There are even physical attacks on critics of immigration by Leftist extremists, something which has been largely ignored and thus quietly approved by the establishment, until it now even targets parties in Parliament. No dissent is tolerated. Opinion polls have revealed that two out of three Swedes doubt whether Islam can be combined with Swedish society, and a very significant proportion of the population have for years wanted more limitations in immigration. Yet not one party represented in the Swedish Parliament is genuinely critical of the Multicultural society or the current immigration policies. The Swedish elite congratulate themselves that they have managed to keep ‘xenophobic’ parties from gaining a foothold while the country is sinking underneath their feet. No, Mr. Jagland, we have nothing to learn from Sweden except hypocrisy to perfection. We should study them only in trying to avoid letting them drag us down with them when they fall, which they will.”

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[Another poster (Mahmood) then asked why the Europeans don’t take action; and I answered as follows.]

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Mahmood, that’s a good question. Let me quote from Fjordman again:

“It’s getting urgent. When enough people feel that the system isn’t working anymore and that the social contract has been breached, the entire fabric of the democratic society could unravel. What happens when the welfare state system breaks down, and there is no longer enough money to “grease” the increasing tensions between immigrants and native Europeans? And what happens when people discover that their own leaders, through the EU networks and the Euro-Arab Dialogue described by Bat Ye’or in her book “Eurabia,” have been encouraging all these Muslims to settle here in the first place? There will be massive unemployment, and tens of millions of people will feel angry, scared and humiliated, betrayed by the system, by society and by their own democratic leaders. This is a situation in some ways similar to the Great Depression that led to the rise of the Nazis in the 1930s. Is this where we’re heading once again, with fear, rising Fascism and political assassinations? The difference is that the “Jewish threat” in the 1930s was entirely fictional, whereas the “Islamic threat” now is very real. However, precisely the trauma caused by the events 70 years ago is clouding our judgment this time, since any talk at all about the threat posed by Muslim immigration or about preserving our own culture is being dismissed as “just like the rhetoric used against Jews by the Nazis.” Europeans have been taught to be so scared of our own shadow that we are incapable of seeing that darkness can come from the outside, too. Maybe Europe will burn again, in part as a belated reaction to the horrors of Auschwitz.”

Are the Swedes Coming to Their Senses?

The Emirate of SwedenAn AP report in Jerusalem Post notes:

The Swedish government and moderate Muslims on Friday sharply rejected demands by an Islamic leader to enact special laws for Muslims living in the Scandinavian country.

Mahmoud Aldebe, head of Sweden’s largest Islamic organization, SMF, said Muslims should be given time off work for Friday prayers and Islamic holidays and that imams should approve all divorces between Muslim couples.

His proposals, presented in a letter Thursday to Sweden’s parliamentary parties, were rejected as “completely unacceptable” by Sweden’s Integration Minister Jens Orback.

They also elicited a flood of criticism from moderate Muslims who said they were content with living under Swedish laws.

Previous Gates of Vienna posts on this topic are here and here.

MKSheppard posted a translation of the Swedish Muslims’ demands in their entirety on the AR15 forum. It includes the cover letter, which compares favorably with LN’s earlier translation. I have posted the entire document here. It bears close and careful scrutiny.

However, here are some choice excerpts which Dymphna has selected.

The problems that exist in regards to the Swedish religious freedom is that it is a Pietistic coloured understanding of individualised religion, that lie behind the Swedish laws regarding religious freedom, whereas for the Muslim minority it is the collective expressions of the religion that are central.

Mahmoud Aldebe, the author of these demands for Muslims, exposes here his own cultural blindness. Muslim collective religious thought does not trump individual religious expression. Sorry, Mahmoud, you can’t argue against the Enlightenment.

The Muslim minority criticises this narrow definition of religion that is the basis of the Swedish laws regarding religious freedom… we can request corrections of the Swedish family law to adapt it to Islam. It is this law that is the most important to Swedish Muslims: marriage, divorce, child protection, and raising underage children.

So far, Muslims have a great record on raising children, given the aggression of young Muslim males against Swedish women. It is the Muslim attitude (read: “contempt for”) Swedish women that needs to change.

A mosque in every city or county would have significant value to the Muslims of the country… it would greatly increase the sense of loyalty towards Sweden as your new homeland, despite being a Muslim.

A little blackmail here?

We demand special legislation in this matter that is the right to two days paid vacation in connection to the celebration of these holidays and that these two days cover the need to celebrate the holidays for Sunni and Shia Muslims and it proves that our religion and culture are accepted by the community.

Historically, the Jews in Christian countries hired “Sabbath goys” to fill in for them on their religious holidays. Muslims might consider doing the same: hire some “Friday kaffirs”. Muslims could learn a great deal from Jews in Sweden about surviving in a hostile environment.

To solve the integration problem requires a true adjustment of legislation to accommodate the Muslim demand…

No. It requires Muslim accommodation. Further, what do Muslims give back in return for the satisfaction of these demands?

Despite the fact that Islam has existed for 32 years as an organised religion in Sweden, the construction of burial grounds has been constantly hampered. Other than in the forest church yard in Stockholm there are Muslim burial grounds in 20 something countries, but that is not enough. Today there are Muslims in nearly 100 counties that lack burial grounds. The biggest general problem that Muslims encounter is that their dead are to be buried as quickly as possible, according to Islamic custom, and by a Muslim burial in their home county.

What Mr. Aldebe fails to mention is the Islamic notion of waqf. Essentially, waqf means that any real estate in which Muslims have ever been buried becomes Islamic property in perpetuity. Ask the Indians about the Taj Mahal. It’s interesting how many of these demands don’t tell the full story. They can often be defined by what they leave out.

Starting Imam education in Swedish universities and colleges is a demand from the nations Muslims and from Swedish authorities. The education can be created as part theology education, part Native Language (Arabic) education. Students can get permission to function as language and theology [religion] teachers. This education can create a natural integration of Islam in Swedish schools, and reduce the demand for private schools.

What gives Muslims the right to demand private schools? Like other sectarian groups, why don’t they build their own educational system? And why should government-run universities have to support theological education of any kind?

That the Swedish legal system is democratic and non-discriminating must in practise mean that the system should protect all people and ethnicities in the country, but this isn’t always enough as the Muslims see it. People who belong to minority groups can require special rights to be able to exist on an equal footing with the majority. The biggest problem that Muslims face is the opinions of the majority. The community is responsible [or guilty] for trying to assimilate the immigrants of the nation.

Wrong again. Inside out and backwards. Immigrants are responsible for their own assimilation. This means learn the language, learn the history, and learn the culture of your hosts. Islam badly needs to evolve a less narcissistic way of being.

Fjordman has often said that Sweden has the most advanced case of multicultural rot, and could be the first to collapse in the face of the Muslim onslaught. It seems that the Swedes may be awakening at last to the danger they face.

Ironically, some of the most commonsensical observations come from a Muslim. According to the Jerusalem Post, Haqq Kielan, head of the Swedish Islamic Society…

…called the proposals “absurd,” adding that they would lead to “a sort of Mullah-rule that people are scared of.”

“If you open the gate for separate laws for different minorities, where will it end?” he said. “We have to have one law for all citizens. That is so obvious that I don’t understand how he can come up with such an idea.”

Indeed.

Waay Behind: Council for April 14th and 21st

Watcher’s CouncilUgly surprise: The Watcher notified me that I hadn’t posted April 14th’s winners. Goldarn it. That means The Long List: everyone who got at least one and two-thirds votes gets a mention. So no long excerpts this time; I don’t want your eyes to glaze over.

In the Council, Dr. Sanity took first place with No Relation to Reality, Indeed.

“I don’t pretend to be an expert on Islam, but it appears to me that much of Muslim culture (particularly in the Middle East) has evolved into a structure for the sole purpose of containing female sexuality.”

The Glittering Eye was second with The Death of 1,000 Cuts. I strongly recommend that you click on this post and read the last paragraph. Print it out, even, and post it where you can remind yourself of what you should be doing.

Gates of Vienna was next for Can Religions Build Their Own Enclaves?. This subject will be coming around again as we become more balkanized.

After me came Righwing Nuthouse. Hmmm…I’m usually after him but this is one of those exceptions.

The Iranians Respond: “You’re Bluffing…We Think”.

“As long as we can keep the Iranians guessing about our response, the more cautious and off balance they will be.”

On the non-council side, an ususual post: a very short story by Dan Simmons with a suspenseful ending. See if you can guess the puzzle: April 2006 Message from Dan.

Captain’s Quarters confirms that Saddam Hussein had “every intention” of attacking the United States. Can anyone get the Dems to stop flogging this dead and pitiful horse? Saddam Targeted American Assets For Terrorism: Case Closed (Bumped).

In Iberian Notes, the widow of Carl Sagan flaunts her own self-sickened version of Hate America First. This fool thinks that she numbers among those who will be exempt. Self-hating Americans.

The Watcher has the rest here.

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And Now, April 21st.

The Council winner was Arrogant District Refuses To Protect White Students by Rhymes With Right. This is a case of being white while right. Hint: it won’t help you, and justice will not necessarily prevail.

The non-council winner asks the question, Do We Need Religion? Wolfgang Bruno proposes an online infidel library:

Publishing rational criticism of Islam, reaching hundreds of thousands of people and potentially hundreds of millions of people across the world, has never been done before until a few years ago. This is also part of the inspiration for my own suggestion of creating an Online Infidel Library, with dozens of books critical of Islam being made available online.

The Watcher has the other posts.

Got a Toostie Pop on Your Forehead?

SUUUCKKERRR!!!


From The Autonomist blog:

Although I’m weak in anthropology, I did get an ‘A’ in biology years ago, and what I learned has given me insight into these strange organisms we call Middle Eastern Muslims. Every organism alive on the planet is good at something. Each has some sort of defense or capability or behavior that gave them an edge over other organisms of past eras and allowed them to evolve to overcome life’s challenges and survive to this day.

Rabbits are fast runners and fast breeders. Tigers are amazingly skilled hunting machines. Elephants are immensely tough and powerful. Monkeys are highly intelligent and adaptable. Frogs have poisonous skin.

But Muslims, like the stick bug and the chameleon and the stone fish, have developed, to an amazing extent, the ability to deceive. And it is that ability that confounds their environmental competitors (you and me) the most.

These types of organisms — “lie-in-wait” predators — must know the full range of behaviors of the organisms they wish to defeat, so as to position themselves correctly for the strike. They are not necessarily strong or powerful, so they must know what frightens, arouses, lures, relaxes, and weakens that which they intend to destroy. For the Muslim, the idea is to exploit our greatest vulnerability — PC thinking.

The Autonomist points out that our narrow Politically Correct and Wildly Wrong (my term, not his) Thinking has left our jugular vein open for a good bite in any interaction we happen to have with Middle East Muslims. He draws on his own maddening experience as a contractor in Iraq for examples of daily taqiyya. Not only do they do it to us, they lie and lie and lie to one another. It’s simply part of the air they breathe:

They hone these deceptive traits by practicing on themselves, first and foremost, by perfecting the art that most Westerners would call “lying.” But to them it’s not really lying. To them, lying is simply the most effective means at their disposal for saving face, being clever, getting ahead, and trying to appear superior. Remember, deception is the Muslim’s most developed trait; their secret weapon. Its constant exercise is not a matter of shame, it’s a matter of pride.

And they absolutely drool at the sight of an unsuspecting Westerner who waltzes into their midst, like the juicy beetle oblivious to the chameleon, with his Christian-based ideas of “Truth” and “honesty” and “ethics” and “integrity.” From Alexander the Great to the 101st Airborne, the first thing the Arabs saw was not our frightening array of weapons, but the big “Tootsie Pop” signs stenciled on our foreheads.

That doesn’t excuse them in my book. Cultural relativity be damned. Chronic, imbedded dishonesty is not only wrong, it is destructive, and it results in chaos. Moral chaos, political chaos, and cultural sinks. As he points out, regarding agreements (and never mind covenants. That would be an order of magnitude beyond the comprehension of the people he deals with:

…in the Middle East, there is no such thing as an Agreement. Whether a verbal commitment or a look straight in the eye or firm handshake or even a written contract, these things here are worth next to nothing. Rather than organizing or finalizing anything, these acts merely serve as a continuation of the struggle by one party to screw the other party more than they plan on getting screwed themselves. Accomplishing a given task, taking pride in one’s work, achieving competence, and even basic concepts of economic gain through mutual trade, take a far back seat to the massive satisfaction gained by getting something more out of someone else then they get from you.

After pointing out his own experiences with the lying, lying, lying Iraqis and Kuwatis, the Autonomist asks why we’d ever believe that “diplomacy” works in this region, why we would be brain-dead enough (my term) to want to negotiate with these predators. Then he gives us a quiz to consider:

Let’s take a quiz:

Q: Why are there no democracies in the Muslim Middle East?

A: Democracies are based on the possibility of mutually held Agreements between people. Democracy is unsustainable in cultures where lying is acceptable and constant.

Q: Why is every Muslim Middle Eastern country characterized by either rigid oppression or chaotic violence?

A: The coercive use of violence is the only way to ensure Muslims in the Middle East will live up to any obligations, including basic social order and function. Middle East countries where chaos currently reigns, like Palestine, Iraq, and Afghanistan, are merely examples of what Muslims are like without coercion.

Q: How is it that intelligence gathering by Western powers, whether it is about the weapons capabilities of an entire nation, or the simple location of a lone thug, is so constantly stymied and duped in the Middle East?

A: The job of intelligence gatherers is to determine the truth. I wouldn’t take that job in the Middle East for all the money in Michael Moore’s Halliburton stocks.

Q: Have you ever seen anything that says “Made in Saudi Arabia”? What was the last thing invented or produced by Middle Eastern Muslims that helped advance humankind? Why are they so incompetent at virtually everything?

A: Although some individuals with quality talents certainly exist here, it would be impossible to gather enough in one place to Agree to cooperate in any sort of complex or significant effort. The only time Muslims can stick together long enough to produce anything en masse, like nuclear missiles for Uncle Mah, is under the threat of force.

Q: Why is it that Muslim leaders can stare the world in the eye and lie through their teeth without even flinching?

A: They’re not lying, they are “negotiating” with people they assume to be complete suckers.

Q: Are they right?

A: Good question

Finished the quiz? Still got that Tootsie pop on your forehead? Anyone that does will make a nice lunch for some Muslim.

That includes you, Dr. Rice.



Hat tip: The American Thinker

Update on the Swedish Muslims’ Demands

 
Reader LN has sent us another email from Sweden:

Thank you Baron!

At least now “they” know that the world’s eye is looking!

Latest Swedish radio 1710 CET is here: “Sveriges muslimska råd i krismöte”, that is, “Swedish Muslim Council in emergency meeting”.

Also, Sugiero has sent a pdf file of the Muslim demands, to replace the one that had a bad link in my earlier post. For those who can read Swedish, here it is.

Thank you, Sugiero!

Sweden Was Anti-Semitic Long Before the Muslims Arrived

 
The Great Synagogue of StockholmIt’s been known for some time that Jews in Sweden are at risk, but the situation is deteriorating.

Currently, Jewish congregations spend twenty-five percent of their budget on security because the police do not act. The synagogue in Stockholm has been told to remove its protective concrete barriers.

Anti-Semitic essays or public remarks are permitted because of the “conflict” with Palestine. However, the opposite does not hold true: speaking out against terrorists is a hate crime.

Sweden has withdrawn from the military exercises in Sardinia because Israel is one of the participants.

Hamas leaders have been given visas to enter Sweden.The Jerusalem Post
reports here:

Swedish Ambassador to Israel, Robert Rydberg, was summoned to the Foreign Ministry on Thursday to explain his government’s decision to give visas to Hamas members to enter Sweden.

Director-General of the Foreign Ministry Ron Prossor said that Stockholm’s decision effectively legitimizes terrorism, and that one cannot make the distinction between a terrorist organization and its members, Israel Radio reported.

The Local, “Sweden’s newspaper in English,” published reports of growing anti-Semitism in the country:

The results, which appeared in Dagens Nyheter, showed that 26% believe that there is a ‘Jewish influence’ over the world’s economy, and 15% consider that influence to be ‘too great’. It also emerged that 14% believe that Jews use the Holocaust for political or economic ends.

One out of four of those questioned said they were negative towards the idea of a Jewish prime minister.

“What has long been a problem is the fact that anti-Semitism has in many ways been denied or trivialised, or that the problem has been seen as peculiar to marginal right wing groups,” said historian Henrik Bachner…

This isn’t new. For a while now, Jews have been hiding their identity to avoid being attacked in public. In 2004, The Stockholm Spectator blog, Stambord, (run by three Irishmen — what is that about?) noted that a few Swedish Jews had joined the IDF in Israel, feeling they were safer there than in Sweden.

As you can see from the previous post, Sweden’s Muslims grow more aggressive by the day. However, what we are less aware of – what has been kept under wraps for the last sixty years – is Sweden’s history of overt anti-Jewish laws:

For ten years up until the end of the Second World War, Swedish priests applied Nazi race rules to marriage.

Swedes who wanted to marry Germans were forced to prove that they were not Jewish. And ‘racially impure’ marriages could be annulled by Swedish courts, according to evidence presented by the Swedish Research Council on Tuesday.

Since 2001, two research programmes have explored various aspects of “Swedish fear, horror and fascination, but also kinship within Swedish science, culture and church life with Nazism and Nazi Germany”.

[…]

Any Swede who wanted to marry an Arian German was forced to sign an affirmation stating that none of the German’s grandparents were Jewish.

According to Lund University’s Professor Anders Jarlert, who led the research, Sweden’s application of these laws lacked historical and democratic legitimacy. It was also alien to the Swedish sense of justice, said Jarlert.

The evidence uncovered by Professor Jarlert shows that Sweden was not merely paying lip service to its powerful neighbour. The Swedish courts were complicit too, annulling a number of marriages and declaring the children born within them as illegitimate.

Stig Ekman, a professor of history with a special interest in Nazism, told DN that Sweden’s culture of secrecy is one reason why the details of the priests’ and courts’ lack of resistance to Nazi influence is only emerging now, 60 years later.

As this study proves, the anti-Semitism in Sweden was well in place before any Muslim set foot there.

As Maxed Out Mama said in a comment at Shrinkwrapped recently:

I think you are right about the Jews getting out of Europe. I hate it, but I think it’s time for them to go. I’d love to see the US have an official open immigration policy for any Jew of European extraction.

We would do well to start with Sweden, though France is surely as dangerous.

The First Muslim Blackmail of Swedish Society

 
Swedish reader LN sent us the following email:

The letter below was published on Swedish TV evening April 27th, but not mentioned on public service radio till April 28th at 8:30am.

Please help — all you eminent anti-jihadists — publicity is needed!

This is his translation of the cover letter for Muslim demands:

Swedish mosqueOpen letter to Swedish political parties participating in this year’s election

Hi,

If we are going to persuade Swedish Muslims to participate in the election in September 2006, we should accept the following claims and wishes — see below — from different muslim minorities in Sweden.

I have not seen manifest and evident signals from all parties that we should comply with such wishes. We ask that the most important claims become part of the political agenda; otherwise the risk is apparent that the majority of the Muslims on election day will remain ‘on the sofa’.

We Muslims are fed up with broken election promises and we wish for tangible proposals that show that Swedes care for us. It won’t be bad if our politically chosen or any new representatives take an hour to read our open letter that has been sent to all the established political parties.

Regards,
Mahmoud Aldebe
Swedish Muslim Leage
Sveriges Muslimska Förbund
Kapellgränd 10       aldebee@yahoo.se
SE-116 25 Stockholm

Last night in Little Green Footballs, Fjordman reported on these demands of the Swedish Muslims:

I have seen some aggressive writings by Muslims in Europe before, but this ranks among the worst I have ever read, anywhere. I don’t have time to translate everything, it is a list running over several pages with aggressive demands for just about everything.

They are DEMANDING separate family laws for Muslims, regulating marriage, divorce etc.

They are DEMANDING that public schools should employ imams to teach homogeneous classes of Muslims children in their religion and the language of their original homeland. (The city of Malmö already has pre-school classes where all teaching is conducted in Arabic. It’s “good for integration.”)

They are DEMANDING a “mosque in every municipality.” The mosques should be built through interest-free loans made available by the local municipalities. This to demonstrate “Islam’s right to exist in Sweden” and to “heighten the status of and respect towards Muslims.”

They are also DEMANDING separation between boys and girls in gymnastics and swimming education in schools.

They are DEMANDING new laws instating Islamic holidays as public holidays for Muslims. Swedes should also ensure that all Muslims get two hours off from work during the congregational Friday prayer every week.

They are DEMANDING that the Swedish church, in cooperation with the local municipalities, makes available an Islamic burial ground in every minucipality in the country where there are Muslims.

They are DEMANDING that Swedish authorities and Swedish media take stronger steps to combat Islamophobia in the public and in the Swedish system of education.

Readers who can translate more of the Swedish documents are welcome to do and send us the result.



Links:

Swedish TV site
Swedish TV site
This is the open letter (now missing)
Windows media video
real player video

Pregnant Girl Kicked in the Stomach: Detention for Youths

 
The following article is taken from the Berliner Morgenpost of April 25, 2006, and was kindly translated from the German by Gates of Vienna reader Borussia in Berlin.

This is raw data; Dymphna may want to apply “I Could Scream” to it later. But what I notice is that the “youths”, needless to say, are Muslims, although the article avoids the M-word.

What was the motive to force such a violent abortion? Was fathering a kaffir baby just too much humiliation and dishonor for the family?

The original article (in German) is here.

UPDATE: Commenter defender has left some remarks that deserve to be quoted in full:

Eclipsed by the now almost common place horrors of the Religion of Peace, this article also provides some interesting insight into the upside down moral calculus of the progressive mind of Europe:

1.   They were not convicted of robbery because the only reason they took her cell phone was to prevent her for calling for help! I suppose the robbery charge would have stuck had it been determined that they stole the phone for their own personal use e.g. perhaps to call out for pizza. Also note that the focus is on the supposed intent of the bastards, not in the actions that they chose to carry out.
2.   Then, in the last paragraph, it appears that the boyfriend was given extra slack because… well… his family also wanted the unborn child to not exist.

Remember, there are justices sitting on the US Supreme Court that think European law should be the model for US judicial decisions.



Pregnant girl kicked in the stomach: Detention for youths

Judge speaks of insidious and exceptional brutality

Report by Michael Mielke

The initial shocking reports had not been exaggerated. The 16 year old Hassan El-Ch. and the one year younger Oktan P. * (names changed) had indeed tried to kick a fetus out of the stomach of a 15 year old girl on December 3, last year. Both received a comparatively high youth sentence in a criminal case held before the Berlin regional court, from which the public was excluded. Hassan El-Ch., who comes from a Lebanese family, was sentenced to three years and six months; Oktan P., of Turkish origins, received three years.

The verdict is not yet binding and the convicted have one week to appeal. The youths will remain in detention. The 16 year old El-Ch. showed no regret and flew into a fit of rage in the court room when the verdict was read.

According to the report by the chairman of the youth chamber, Bernd Miczajka, the two accused had lured their victim under a pretext to the yard of the Hedwig Dohm school in Moabit district on December 3. The German, Angelina R., was the girlfriend of Hassan El-Ch. and six months pregnant. What followed then seems incomprehensible: the unsuspecting girl was suddenly thrown to the ground. Both of the accused struck and kicked their victim, particularly in the stomach and on her back, in order to kill the unborn baby. At several points they repeatedly asked Angelina R. whether the child was already dead. When she answered negatively, she was further abused and finally forced to climb a three meter high scaffold and jump down from there. Afraid for her life, the girl obeyed their orders, jumped, and injured herself on her chin and lips.

Following this, El-Ch. and Oktan P. released the schoolgirl, convinced that the unborn baby had now actually died.

Judge Miczajka spoke of an insidious, and extremely brutal methodology.

The juvenile court considered the fact that that the two young people inquired again about the death of the unborn baby while abusing their victim as particularly despicable.

Angelina R. initially remained lying in the schoolyard, but was then able to drag herself into the nearby gymnasium to ask for help. The unborn child was saved in the hospital by a Caesarean section. According to court reports, the mother and child are — at least physically — in good condition.

The conviction of the two juvenile offenders followed a jointly committed abortion attempt and grievous bodily injury. A further accusation by the public prosecutor’s office – a case of robbery – was not upheld by the court. The accused had taken a mobile phone from the girl, according to Judges Miczajka, but this probably did not occur in order to keep it, but to prevent Angelina R. from getting help quickly.

A conviction because of attempted homicide or attempted murder is not legally possible, the judge explained, since this crime does not apply to unborn life.

The youth court considered in mitigation the confessions of the two accused who had no previous record. In addition, Hassan El-Ch. was in an exceptional situation since he was under considerable pressure from his family because of the pregnancy of his girlfriend.

The 17th Carnival of Homeschooling

 
The 17th Carnival of Homeschooling is up, hosted by The Common Room. I went over and took a brief look around, and chose three entries at random (OK, I admit it: I went to Math and History first because those are my favorites).

The Homeschool Math Blog contributes an essay called “Reform math – we need a BALANCE”. We old-timers consider “Reform Math” to be the bane of math education, but Ms. Miller doesn’t want to throw the baby out with the bathwater:

The key is a BALANCE. Truth is somewhere in the middle. Kids absolutely need to learn their addition facts and memorize their multiplication facts. Otherwise, they’re going to go about learning math without a FOUNDATION.

But, I feel it is very important to teach them also WHY the rules and procedures work.

Principled Discovery features a post called Teaching Perspectives, a summary of educational philosophy:

So, I made up my own paradigm. Because I like where the TPI [Teaching Perspectives Inventory] begins, I too started with reflecting on basic beliefs. I started with a basic philosophy of government, or who is sovereign, and looked at how that naturally would affect the role of the learner and the teacher. I then looked at the goals of education which would naturally be held by that belief system. Finally, I looked at the actions, or methodology, which would most naturally lead to the stated goals. Here is my summary…

You’ll have to go over to Principled Discovery to see the summary, because it’s a large graphic and can’t be shown here.

For teaching history, Trinity Prep School unveils (with illustrations) the Book of Centuries,

We’ve found a fun way to incorporate history, reading comprehension, narration/composition skills, handwriting/keyboarding and art. Making a Book of Centuries is not an original idea. But I thought if I detailed how simple this project can be, other homeschool families may enjoy starting their own Book of Centuries.

Each week my kids make a story page about a person, place or event studied in history. Filed chronologically in a very large 3-ring binder, they can literally turn the pages of time!

There’s a lot more available at the 17th Carnival of Homeschooling. Homeschoolers (and wannabe homeschoolers) are advised to go over and look at all the entries.

It’s Time to Go

 
It’s Time to Go!Back in my misspent youth, when I was a dissolute hippie living in a group house in the D.C. area, one of my housemates was a young man who joined our group after being pressured to move out of his parents’ house. On his 21st birthday, Duncan’s father gave him a suitcase and a clock. The message? “It’s Time to Go.” So Duncan went, and ended up with us.

The United Nations is over 21. In fact, it’s getting quite long in the tooth. But here it is, sporting a three-day beard, still sleeping in its old childhood bed, the one with the spaceships on the bedspread and a cowboy holster hanging on the post, its oversize feet sticking out past the end of the mattress. It’s costing the parents a fortune to feed and clothe it, but the UN just won’t leave.

For someone who loathes the UN as much as I do, John Bolton is the best ambassador that could be hoped for. But the problem is that we have to have an ambassador in the first place. The problem is that we have to have that monstrous toad squatting on the premises at Turtle Bay, eating us out of house and home.

The UN started out as a Noble Ideal, and passed through various stages such as Harmless Sideshow, Amusing Diversion, and Irritating Obstruction. It has now entered its terminal phase as an Active Evil.

It’s not just that it lets Libya or Cuba sit on its Human Rights Commission, or that the General Assembly has passed 4,770,238 resolutions condemning Israel. It’s not just that it acted as a money-launderer and corrupt fixer for Saddam’s regime. And it’s not even the fact that it sits idly by while various murderous regimes commit genocide in Rwanda and Darfur and East Timor.

The main problem is that it is going to act as a deliberate impediment to the most important task of our time: compelling Iran to give up its quest for nuclear weapons. The current administration, egged on by the Europeans (and especially the British), has decided that the UN is the only way to handle Iran.

But anyone with more than three brain cells can see that the UN is not going to do anything to stop Iran. France, Russia, and China will see to that; their perceived interests compel them to obstruct any real Security Council action against Iran.

And our interests, the interests of the United States of America, absolutely demand that the Iranians be defanged. If we are serious at all about what we intend, we have no business dealing with the UN.

So why do we keep on doing it? Part of the answer may be found in a worldwide BBC World Service Poll (pdf format), conducted this past January:

“Please tell me if you think the United Nations is having a mainly positive or mainly negative influence in the world.”

Respondents in the United States answered as follows:

     Mainly positive   52
  Mainly negative   36
  Depends   3
  Neither, no difference   4
  DK/NA   5

Interestingly enough, Americans have a higher opinion of the UN than people in Russia, Saudi Arabia, Brazil, and Argentina, to name a few. Is this a function of the effective PR machine operated by the UN and its NGOs in this country?

Whatever the reason, the President and members of Congress face real political risks if they attempt to get us out of the UN. So, instead, they diddle around at the edges here and there, demanding “reform”, reshuffling the organizational deck chairs, withholding a little bit of cash now and then, insisting on minute changes of wording in appalling resolutions, etc., etc. In essence, nothing ever changes.

Since the media and the chattering classes are firmly – if delusionally – convinced of the value of the UN, in order to effect change our leaders would have to take a different tack.

The President could soften up the electorate by publicly criticizing specific actions of the UN and the officials who implement them. The White House could issue press releases describing in detail the systemic corruption of the UN. The President could direct that significant portions of our dues be withheld. From time to time, when the issue is an important one, the President could remind the American people that the pronouncements of the UN do not trump the sovereignty of the United States, nor can they contravene our Constitution. He could then order the agencies under his control not to follow specific directives of the UN that fit these conditions.

All of these actions would have the effect of lowering Americans’ opinion of the UN, and make it easier to withdraw from it when the time is ripe.

But time is short, and all of this would take leadership, real, courageous leadership from our Chief Executive. So far, such leadership has been lacking.

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Just say ‘No’ to the UN!So what would replace the UN if the United States were to give it the old heave-ho?

Some people suggest the formation of a “League of Democracies”, but I am dubious. Such a League would almost certainly have to include Russia (which, after all, holds “elections”), and definitely would include France. We’d be back in the same old position, trying to do back-door deals with countries whose interests simply run counter to ours. Even democracies can have mutually exclusive interests.

I don’t see the necessity for some over-arching international body whose decisions are binding on its members; such organizations are pipe-dreams, the leftovers of the gooey socialist Left that have plagued us since the Treaty of Versailles.

The time-honored technique of forming ad-hoc, mutable, and occasionally shifting alliances should serve us well. In practice, one such alliance will consist of what is becoming known as the Anglosphere: the United States, Britain, Australia, Canada, and other English-speaking states, as well as Japan, and now India (Yay India!). The interests of these countries will often align with ours, so agreement on common policy and actions will be relatively easy.

But none of the arrangements would be binding or permanent – Britain, in particular, with its advanced case of sclerotic Socialism, will not always be willing to yoke its wagon to the same ox as ours.

In fact, sometimes it seems as if it’s just the Yanks and the Aussies, standing back-to-back and reloading while painted savages swarm over the palisade on all sides. But if that’s the way it has to be, we are tough enough to handle it.

The alternative is to have corrupt and malign dictatorships under the protective mantle of the United Nations oversee our own destruction.

Millennia from now, after the Second Dark Age has ended, when civilization has finally regenerated itself out of seeds carefully nurtured in Singapore or Botswana, archaeologists will regard our own time the same way we look at the fallen aqueducts and uncovered mosaic floors of the Romans. They will burrow into sealed vaults of our CD-ROMs, excavate the interchanges of Interstate 95, and go scuba-diving among the stumps of monuments in the muck at the bottom of the Potomac Bay, and then they will say to each other, “Look what they once were, and look what they came to be! How could they have let that happen?

We who stand on the badly damaged ramparts of Western Civilization are the only ones who can answer that question.

Well, how could we?

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UPDATE:

The Washington Times reports:

The United Nations confirmed yesterday the U.S. Attorney’s Office is investigating suspected wrongdoing in the office that handles procurement for U.N. peacekeeping operations.

In a further blow to the troubled peacekeeping department, a report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to be delivered to Congress today describes the procurement office as understaffed, poorly trained and badly lacking the oversight that would uncover corruption, fraud and waste.

Eight senior staff members were suspended with pay earlier this year, after an inquiry by the U.N. inspector general’s office uncovered lax management and possible corruption.

Now how much will it cost the U.S. taxpayer this time for an investigation whose results we could have recited in unison?

(Hat tip: Geepers)

The Last Boat Out of Liverpool

 
This post has been sitting in various places, half-written, for several weeks now. Parts of it are on my laptop; parts have been printed out and left in pieces on the coffee table. A few notes flutter out of my journal where I stuck them several weeks ago.

It would seem I’d rather not finish the post, and, at least on one level, that’s true. But another part of me aches for the remembrance then and the sense of helplessness now, as history repeats itself.

So push has come to shove: April 25th is the day set aside annually for the commemoration of the Holocaust. It is the day to remember those millions of souls who vanished into silence during the Second World War. Today the post gets written, or it gets consigned to oblivion.

This is a personal story. It is not the tale of a Holocaust survivor, but a recollection of shame about my family — a feeling that is fading as I observe myself in the same position my mother occupied when it was her turn to watch what the Western world does to Jews.

I was raised a devout Roman Catholic. My mother was born and lived in Ireland until her marriage to my father — a union which happened to coincide with Hitler’s invasion of Poland. Having been swept off her feet by this handsome American, what relevance could a Blitzkrieg possibly have to my mother’s life?

Mother of Dymphna, second from the left


As it transpired, very little. My mother was an intelligent woman, but she was not an intellectual. She read devotional books, or an occasional novel. The larger world held little interest for her, and, until she became an American citizen fifteen years after her arrival here, I never even heard her discuss politics. Apolitical people like my mother are not unusual; even so, looking back at the history through which she lived, I find it hard to comprehend how little it meant to her. On the other hand, being an alien resident with a green card, always feeling that at any moment she could be sent back, Mother did not live at the forefront of her life. Only after friends pushed her through the process of applying for citizenship, only after taking the oath and being able to check the box “U.S. Citizen” on forms — only then did she relax enough to look at the headlines. Now she belonged; now she could vote. Her very first presidential election was Adlai Stevenson and Eisenhower. The image of my mother wobbling off on my bike to vote for the first time remains distinct.

My exposure to history as a child was mostly the 1950s version of the patriotic American story. The threat of Communism was very real to Catholic schoolchildren in those days. We knew about the imprisonment of Cardinal József Mindszenty, and prayed for him. The burgeoning parochial school system was dedicated to producing assimilated American Catholic children — very definitely, Red-White-and-Blue Catholics is what we were.

If history classes touched on the Holocaust, I do not remember it. What I do recall, as freshly as if it happened last month, was my introduction to the images of the concentration camps. The program, narrated by Edward R. Murrow, riveted me to the television screen.

This was my first brush with Evil, up close and unrelenting. By the time the program was over, I was (I now know) in a state of shock. I had just been traumatized by the enormity of our human capacity for malevolence. My innocence was a dead, useless skin, quickly molted and left behind. I remember being angry as only idealistic adolescents can be. When my mother returned — she had been at some devotional at church — I was beside myself. In fact, from then on I could understand what that phrase meant.

I confronted her at the door, tears streaming down my face. Her instant maternal alarm quickly dissolved when she learned the source of my distress.

“Oh, that thing about the concentration camps,” she said, waving it away. “I heard they were going to show that.”

I was stunned. “You mean you knew about it?”

“Oh, vaguely. Your father and I got the last boat out of Liverpool to come to America. I remember U-boats following us all the way through international waters. Down in steerage there were crowds of people. Most of them had tattoos. I knew they’d been in some prisons Hitler set up for the Jews. They were a sad lot.”

In my whole life this was the only time I ever wanted to hit my mother. How could she?

“How could you just ignore it? Why didn’t you do something?”

Mother looked at me as though as though I were speaking Greek, as though I were the alien. I hated her callous dismissal of a part of history that was up close and unspeakably inhuman.

Eventually I quit asking her questions. Later, as an adult, I realized how anxious and scared she’d been herself through those years. With the passage of enough time I even forgave her, as children do, though my whole-hearted respect never returned.

Auschwitz survivors


In the days following my discovery, it was hard to think of anything else. When I lay down at night, the images of those stacked bodies and the slack-jawed living skeletons would not permit me a luxury like sleep. If I slept, then I would be equally complicit with those who had permitted these atrocities.

Slowly, I became fiercely pro-Israel. I even considered converting to Judaism as a kind of reparation. Of course, I never said this out loud. I lived in a Catholic ghetto; though I never ever heard any anti-Semitic remarks, I was on an island of Catholics in a sea of Southern Baptists. Jews — as evidenced by Israel — were admirable but exotic.

As I matured and witnessed and cheered Israel’s survival, I learned more about the rich history of Jews in America. I read with a shiver of pride George Washington’s Letter to the Jewish congregation in Rhode Island. Heartened by Israel’s “Never Again”, I knew with certainty that “Never in America” was an absolute. I read Jewish biographies like Harry Golden’s For Two Cents Plain, books about urban Jewish childhoods. I envied the survival instincts of these, my religious forebears.

As Palestine became the darling of the Left, I moved right. Up until now, I’d always seen my conservative philosophy as arising from my economic principles, and that is certainly true. But, above all, it was my solidarity with Israel which slowly evolved into a militant stand against those of my fellow citizens who seemed to hate America and Israel equally. When I would occasionally (and then more frequently) meet a pro-Palestinian Jew, the cognitive dissonance made me queasy. Their outlook, to me, was either insane or perverted. I still think this.

Life comes full circle in more ways than one can imagine in adolescence. Reading Shrinkwrapped’s description of the increasingly desperate straits of Stockholm’s Jews, I am now in same helpless position my mother once occupied. The fact that I am more informed than she was does not render me more competent to do anything. The fact that I know she and I were and are part of a larger historical wave of Western self-destruction does not provide surcease.

The most bizarre and perverted aspect of this phenomenon of self-hatred is the denial of the Holocaust itself. This symptom of our cultural depravity, even if it exists only on the fringes, is deeply disturbing for what it portends for the future of the West. If we are denied our remembrance of the past — and 9/11 is now entering this “VERBOTEN” zone — then what are we?

What are we, with no history?

My intent is to continue, by whatever means I have, to wrest from the culture-killers and the memory-hole guardians, the haters and the equivocators, their prominence of place in the American landscape.

Otherwise, what is the point?

Declaration of the Treaty of Umar, 2006

We, the Dhimmi People...


In submission to political Islam:

  • We shall not create or publish any art to be displayed in any public forum that is offensive to any Muslim.
  • We shall not write articles, books or essays that criticize political Islam.
  • We shall not give a full report on the violence of political Islam around the world nor mention jihad.
  • We shall show respect towards political Islam and defer to Islam’s demands on political, cultural and public issues.
  • We declare that the First Amendment does not apply to political Islam.
  • We shall criticize our civilization, but never criticize political Islam.
  • We shall find fault with ourselves when political Islam commits violence.
  • We shall change our laws and customs in accordance with the wishes of political Islam.
  • We shall not study the Koran, the life of Mohammed (the Sira) or the Traditions of Mohammed (the Hadith).
  • We shall not teach the history of political Islam’s 150 million victims.
  • We shall not teach how Islam sold African slaves to the world and enslaved Europeans and Asians.
  • We shall only teach about the “Golden Age of Islam”.
  • We shall not criticize the payment of the jizyah (foreign aid) to Islamic countries.
  • We shall keep our gates wide open for Muslim immigrants.
  • Whoever criticizes a Muslim with deliberate intent shall be declared a bigot and attacked.
  • We submit to political Islam and as dhimmis we seek the protection of Islam.



Many thanks to the Blue Scarf Society for the treaty, and to Symbolic Truth Middle East Graphics for the image.

Green on the Outside, Red in the Middle

 
Information from The Watcher of Weasels to bring you up to date — or perhaps you already knew this:

Celebrate Earth Day

Some fans of the Watermelon want to make August 3rd the unofficial celebration of National Watermelon Day, but to me Watermelon Day is the perfect nickname for Earth Day, because so many of its most ardent supporters are really just Marxists wrapped up in eco-friendly clothing… they’re Red on the inside and Green on the outside. And the so-called environmentalist movement is really just a conduit for their anti-Capitalist and anti-American propaganda. Ask anyone who scoffs at this notion why it is that Lenin’s birthday was chosen as the official day to celebrate Earth Day, eh?

Earth Day is Lenin’s birthday?? It’s the birthday of the Baron’s Boy also. How will I break the news?

But please, let us not ruin a perfectly good fruit on a group of nut cakes.