The advent of digital computers and the emergence of the internet have allowed the development of a generalized theory of viruses as invasive self-replicating structures within information systems. Biological organisms, human cultures, and computer networks all constitute information systems which can be exploited by virus-like entities.

In many ways radical Islam acts as a virus on societal structures. It is passed from host to host rapidly, without the necessity of any intervention by formal political structures. The bug is simply in the air, and is picked up by the susceptible recipient through the vectors of mosque communities and media propaganda.

One of the simplest forms of a biological virus is a bacteriophage. It consists of a strand of DNA enclosed in a protein coat, a set of leg-like structures which attach to a host’s cell wall, and a neck or proboscis which enables the virus to breach the cell wall and inject its DNA into the bacterium.

This is possibly the simplest chemical structure to which the adjective “living” might be applied. If one were to digitize the bacteriophage’s entire system – the codons of the DNA sequence, the lattice structure of the protein molecules in the dodecahedral coat, the protein fibers of the legs, and the protein chains in the neck and basal plate – the whole thing might take fewer bits of storage than the web page you’re viewing right now. Yet in short order the bacteriophage uses the bacterium’s own cell machinery to replicate itself over and over within its host until the cell bursts, releasing all the new viruses into the environment to find new hosts and repeat the process.

A computer virus functions in a fashion that is exactly analogous to the modus operandi of the bacteriophage. It emerges from the environment (the internet) and attaches itself to its host (a PC) via a vulnerable receptor site (a hole in the firewall). It replicates itself using the host’s own mechanisms (the script-running software) and then bursts back out into the environment (via emailed copies of itself) to repeat the process.

Any information system is vulnerable to the same kind of malformation: if it provides a mechanism for transmitting and replicating information, it can be infected by the equivalent of viruses.

Cultures are information systems that exist within a different substrate from those of biological cells or computer systems. The individual – with a cultural template stored in his brain – is the equivalent to a computer or a cell, and his environment is the complex network of communication by which humans exchange information.

Radical Islam is a very simple information structure, yet quite adept at invading its hosts. It travels through various media and finds a vulnerable receptor in the outer defenses of its host – a cultural template weakened by decades of political correctness and the behavioral sink of the modern popular media – and uses the host’s intellectual mechanisms to reproduce via proselytizing.

A virulent virus may in time destroy itself by being too effective, killing off all the available hosts. But this is of no concern to the viral meme as it spreads and replicates – immediate survival and reproduction are its only motivation.

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Any information system – biological or otherwise – that is attacked by viruses develops a defense against such infections. A complex biological organism develops an immunological system – antibodies, white blood cells, and so on – to resist new infections. A savvy computer user installs anti-virus software. Cultures develop their own defenses, collectively-held memes affirmed by restatement in simple forms – slogans, visual images, common rituals, etc.

Among the most effective – and therefore dangerous – viruses are the immunodeficiency viruses such as HIV. They have evolved mechanisms to attack and disable the host organism’s own immunological system at its vulnerable points.

Likewise, a sophisticated computer virus will disable a host’s anti-virus software as one of its first actions after infecting a host. Not long ago Dymphna’s laptop was infected by a nasty internet worm, and the first thing it did was disable the Norton anti-virus software, while allowing it to maintain a façade of its normal functioning. After that the worm could proceed with its dirty work unimpeded.

So what is the radical Islamic version of HIV?

Islam (and not just the radical version) has found the points of PC vulnerability in our cultural immunological system. The antibodies that would otherwise surround and neutralize its memes are converted into “racism” and thus rendered non-functional. The white blood cells of the media, which would otherwise engulf the invader and destroy it, have been thinned out by the leukemia of socialist internationalism and have been co-opted and completely disabled by the invader.

If we are to overcome this infection we must restore our cultural immunological system. We need to establish new lymph nodes in the form of new media, which can then send out healthy white blood cells to engulf the invaders. Deny the enemy the use of “you’re a racist”, and our antibodies can begin to function again.

It’s going to be a long uphill struggle. The pharmacology of cultural anti-retrovirals is still in its infancy.

Gates of Vienna is venturing to the Delaware Outback for the weekend. We’ll be taking the laptop, so who knows? We may post a little here and there.

The slogan contest is in the hands of the judges. Stay tuned for the results.

While we’re gone, you will want to visit one or more of the following:

Starling David Hunter, for the best in economic analysis, Wal-Mart stories, links to stories and essays you won’t find anywhere else.

Planck’s Constant, on general principles.

The Common Room, for superior pedagogy.

The Belmont Club, for obvious reasons.

Point Five, to keep you laughing.

Kingdom of Chaos, for historical analysis.

Atlas Shrugs, the supreme podcaster.

The Adventures of Chester, for military and national security issues.

L’Ombre de l’Olivier, an expat Englishman in France

In From the Cold, for an ex-spy’s viewpoint.

And, of course, Florida Cracker. You may not need her now, but when the hurricanes hit, Donnah will come in handy.

Or, check out the blogroll. Who knows what you might find?

Mark Steyn thinks that pan-Islamism represents a serious challenge to the nation-state. I concur.

Steyn marshals as evidence for his theory several factors:

• The collusion of the MSM with those who wish to destroy Western traditions. The latest example, of course, is Reuters’ conspiracy with Hezbollah. One could also point out the special care some members of the French press have taken in setting up “scenes” in Gaza for the Palestinians to demonstrate the barbarity of the Israelis.
• The Pew poll taken recently in Britain: eighty-one percent of British Muslims consider their primary allegiance to be Islam, not Britain.
• The situation in Lebanon.

As Steyn says:

Lebanon is a sovereign state. It has an executive and a military. But its military has less sophisticated weaponry than Hezbollah and its executive wields less authority over its jurisdiction than Hezbollah. In the old days, the Lebanese government would have fallen and Hezbollah would have formally supplanted the state. But non-state actors like the Hezbo crowd and al-Qaida have no interest in graduating to statehood. They’ve got bigger fish to fry. If you’re interested in establishing a global caliphate, getting a U.N. seat and an Olympic team only gets in the way. The “sovereign” state is of use to such groups merely as a base of operations, as Afghanistan was and Lebanon is. They act locally but they think globally.

“And,” he adds, “that indifference to the state can be contagious.”

I used to be sanguine about the pseudo-intellectuals’ takeover of our academy, the press, an exponentially expanding governmental bureaucracy and an activist judiciary concerned with a “living” Constitution – though the death of this document had escaped the notice of most of us.

I thought this change was a generational thing brought on by the silliness of the sixties and the historically, economically, and philosophically ignorant — i.e., those who swallowed the Soviet line about the triumph of Marxism. After the fall of the Berlin Wall and the implosion of the Soviet Union, like many others I thought it was simply a matter of time before peculiar people like Ward Churchill and Noam Chomsky aged out and left the field to those who has seen the mistakes socialism had wrought, even in this country.

Of course, that was before 9/11 and the steep rise in the national consciousness of militant Islam, and the national argument about whether or not it represented a “real” threat to our country or to its sovereignty. And my illusion was also prior to the full impact of the EU’s transnationalist agenda, or the attempt to blanket world governments with the faux science and unfair practices of the Kyoto Protocols, or the endeavor to place the U.S. under the laws of a world court — an appalling menace that seems welcome to some members of our own Supreme Court.

These are all threats to our sovereignty, but none is as loud, as violent, or as large and relentless as the threat of Islamic terror — bloody murder carried out in the name of Holy Law, beyond which there is no appeal. It is this we must address first because it is this rebirth of the idea of empire (call it the Ummah; it’s still an empire) that most jeopardizes the United States and the Anglosphere. At least those members of the Anglosphere which are obviously firmly in the camp of the notion of the nation-state and even those, like Britain, who might eventually be retrieved from the maw of the transnational EU — a nation-killer if ever there was one.

But before discussing the critical issue of the nation-state, we should step back a pace and consider the alternatives to national sovereignty, and what these alternatives represent both historically and to our future as a country.

We have known only two other choices when it comes to political organization: anarchy or imperialism. [Yes, of course, the U.S. has been accused of imperialism — when it is not being accused of isolationism — but we’ll leave that aside for the moment since the accusation exists in theory only. There are no examples of colonies for our so-called empire, so we’ll dispense with evil Amerikkka for the moment and simply define the idea of empire for the sake of clarity, not to mention brevity.]

Part III of Redefining Sovereignty (edited by Orrin Judd), covers a wide range of concerns under the title of “ The Transnational Threat.” For our purposes, the salient essay is On the National State: Empire and Anarchy, by Yoram Hazony.

Mr. Hazony posits the national state as the “linchpin” of the central ideas in the political traditions of the West, and on it depend our ideas about the rule of law, representative government, and, above all, personal liberty. He compares the “tyranny and disorder” of these two alternative polities, anarchy and empire, and gives a brief historical account of their persistence in history.

Anarchical arrangements are distinguished from imperial ones by focusing on the principal political loyalty of each: in the former, the loyalty of the individual is to himself alone. He transfers his fealty to clan, tribe, or lord, and that loyalty is indeed transferable.:

For if allegiance is given to a familiar individual or lord, and if allegiance to this lord will remain unshaken [until] the day he withdraws his allegiance to his own lord and gives it to another, then… [it is the nature of] the anarchic or feudal loyalty [that it] remains always with the particular and the concrete individual who is our lord, and to whom we have sworn allegiance…

[…]

Under empire, on the other hand, one’s allegiance is never to a familiar individual, but rather to the empire itself, whose ruler is distinguished precisely by the fact that he is so remote and unapproachable as to in effect be no more than an abstraction.

[…]

On this basis we can recognize that empire and anarchy are not merely political constructs, or competing methods of ordering political power. Each is in fact a political ordering principle that draws its legitimacy, and therefore its strength, from its rootedness in the moral order… men understand the political order in which they live and to which they are committed in terms of principle and that struggle between empire and anarchy is not only a war of opportunists and villains seeking the greatest power for themselves, but equally a confrontation between men of goodwill who disagree regarding the degree of moral legitimacy and sanction that can be ascribed to each.

As Mr. Hazony points out, both impersonal universal rule — the moral order of empire — and individual rule — the moral order of anarchy — lead to endless strife. The empire must expand, while anarchy quickly leads to arbitrary violence (think of the anarchic and conflicting urban gangs). As he says, “it matters little whether the tormentor will be one or many.”

This dilemma arises out of our very nature, but the conflict between these two extremes of subservience is resolved by the creation of the nation-state, whose laws are derived neither by lord nor emperor, but by the citizens of a bounded country. Personal liberty is assured by the very nature of this polity where leadership passes from one elected leader to another in an orderly manner. Personal allegiance to one’s country arises from the experience of living in freedom, balanced by the personal obligations all citizens have to preserve the nation that claims one’s allegiance and bestows citizenship.

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Next: On its surface Islam is simply another form of imperialism, although its content is — and always has been — murderously anarchic fragmentation.

The entries have been pouring in for the counter-jihad slogan contest; there are more than 75 of them so far.

Three prominent bloggers have agreed to judge the results:

• Pamela, of Atlas Shrugs
• Francis, of L’Ombre de l’Olivier
• a4g, of Point Five

The contest closes as of 6:00pm EDT tonight. Add any further entries to the comments on the original post before then; I’ll close the post to comments after that.

For those who sent their entries by email: Yes, those will be included.

When the judges have decided, we will post the winners and the runners-up.

Get ready to revise your nmemonic for the new, revised edition of our solar system.

On August 24th, the astronosphere (otherwise known as the Professional Astronomers Club, the IAU) will decide whether or not we still have nine planets, or if the number should be shoved up to twelve. This legerdemain will involve moving past that peculiar planet Pluto to include other plutons like Charon (Pluto’s moon) and large asteroids such as UB313, which is actually larger than Pluto and has some planet-like characteristics. And let’s not forget Ceres, an asteroid.

An asteroid?? Well, yes. It seems that the rules which decide what’s a planet and what’s a pluton and what’s just space trash are rather fluid. Like the rather changeable definitions of psychiatric diagnoses, the designation “planet” has some political undertones. Thus, the IAU, at its conference in Prague, will decide on August 24th whether or not these upstarts will be added to the list of planets, forcing billions of school children to devise new mnemonics for remembering a newly enlarged planetary system. Bummer.

To get the details on the fluid definition of what makes up a planet, and to keep up on the outcome of the vote, be sure to read Bad Astronomy Blog.

Hat tip: Josh Reviews Everything via “The Carnival of the Capitalists” at The Business of America is Business blog. If you haven’t been following the carnival, you might want to look in. I’ll bet you can’t hit just one link. For instance, there’s an intriguing entry entitled “How a Bad Boss Improves Your Career” and another on France’s reliance on hand-writing samples in choosing employees, and yet another on why you don’t need money to start a business.

The Capitalists’ Carnival has the most intriguing entries of any blog grouping I’ve seen. But then that’s the entrepreneurial — and social — nature of business.

Note: the following post was based on text taken from the Hizb ut-Tahrir website on August 10th, 2006. The link given here was good at that time, but the site seems to have been taken down since. The full text is available here.

Consider the following piece of text:

What is manifested in these political actions is culturing the Proletariat with the Socialist culture in order to melt her with Socialism and to cleanse it of the corrupt creeds, false thoughts and erroneous concepts including the influence of Capitalist thoughts and opinions.

What is also manifested in these political actions is an intellectual and political struggle. The manifestation of an intellectual struggle is through the struggle against the thoughts and systems of Capitalism. It is also manifested in the struggle against false thoughts, corrupt creeds and erroneous concepts by demonstrating their corruption, showing their error and presenting clearly the verdict of Socialism concerning them.

From a pamphlet by Lenin, maybe? A polemic from Trotsky? Or maybe just a quote from a Soviet high school textbook circa 1935, written by a party hack?

Well, no. The words in red have been changed from the original. Here’s the real text:

What is manifested in these political actions is culturing the Ummah with the Islamic culture in order to melt her with Islam and to cleanse her of the corrupt creeds, false thoughts and erroneous concepts including the influence of Kufr thoughts and opinions.

What is also manifested in these political actions is an intellectual and political struggle. The manifestation of an intellectual struggle is through the struggle against the thoughts and systems of Kufr. It is also manifested in the struggle against false thoughts, corrupt creeds and erroneous concepts by demonstrating their corruption, showing their error and presenting clearly the verdict of Islam concerning them.

It’s part of the mission statement from the official Hizb ut-Tahrir website.

Hizb ut-Tahrir means “Party of Liberation” in Arabic. The party was founded by Sheikh Taqiuddin al-Nabhani, a judge from Jerusalem, in 1953. Its stated purpose is to purify Islam, re-establish the Caliphate, and spread the Faith throughout the world.

Hizb ut-Tahrir (HuT) has been associated with various terrorist activities, and as a result was banned in many countries. Britain, with its long tradition of permissiveness and civil liberties, was one of the holdouts. The public spokesmen for HuT in Britain stoutly disavowed terrorism, and so it continued to tolerated in the UK until 2005.

At that time Prime Minister Tony Blair, in a speech outlining HM government’s new actions against terrorism in the wake of the 7/7 bombings, announced that HuT would be “proscribed”.

But it didn’t really work out that way. In the suffocating politically correct fug that is modern British politics, no such ban could be maintained. According to the Independent, the British government “backed off after warnings from police, intelligence chiefs and civil liberties groups that a ban could backfire by forcing a non-violent group underground.”

Rather than address the hermeneutics of Hizb ut-Tahrir’s non-violence, I’d like to examine the group based on its own words.

From the example given above, you can see the uncanny resemblance between HuT’s rhetoric and Marxist-Leninist doctrine. Their manifesto continues in the same vein for more than 3,500 eyelid-drooping words. Here’s another sample:

Continue reading →

Tomorrow is the big day in Sweden, when the Final Report on Immigration Policy will be released by the Swedish government.

Swedish reader LN sends a detailed summary of the situation, with translations of excerpts from Swedish sources, plus his own commentary:

In the Weekly Standard, February 28, 2005, Christopher Caldwell writes: In a country where, as the Swedish sociologist Åke Daun puts it, “People like being like each other,” there is evidence of profound exhaustion with immigration, whether the reasons for this exhaustion are rationally well-founded or not. In the moral-superpower context, it is the equivalent of “imperial overstretch. Swedes tell pollsters they want no more asylum-seekers. (A common complaint is that prospective arrivals have figured out how to “game” the rules of asylum applications, and that the best way to render one’s story unchallengeable under the law is to destroy one’s identity papers.) A very low rate of mixed marriage is an indication that Swedes may not have been crazy about this immigration in the first place.

Caldwell then quotes Masoud Kamali, an Iranian-born professor of ethnic studies at the University of Uppsala who arrived in Sweden 1987 under the pretext of being a political refugee. He studied efficiently: Ph.D. in December 1995, 1999 senior lecturer in sociology and since 2002 he is a professor in ‘social work’. He has declared himself being a non-believing muslim (sic).

“Many of us,” says Masoud Kamali, “saw Sweden as the homeland of tolerance, solidarity, and democracy, based on the image of Sweden abroad. Yet foreigners find that the longer they live in Sweden, the more foreign they feel.”

Kamali, who directs studies on xenophobia and social exclusion for both the E.U. and the Swedish government, says: “Integration is a complete failure: No one can deny it.”

Kamali, a radical and controversial figure, speculates that a fear of getting segregated out of the society may be the reason that immigrants have shown themselves in favor of European Union membership, both at the ballot box and in opinion polls. “They think: ‘You are not going to be a Swede — or, at least, it’s not you who’s going to decide if you are a Swede.’ but perhaps you can choose to be a European.”

The then integration minister Mona Sahlin — in several contexts mentioned as a society-smasher — in 2004 set up an investigation into a new “Integration Policy”. After a year, she chose to replace the research management since they did not present preliminary results in line with the policy of the party (Social Democrats). The investigation had come to the conclusion that Sweden favours immigrants in many different ways, and such research-results did she not want (another Swedish link in English!).

The controversial Masoud Kamali was appointed the new head of the investigation. The investigation has already presented 12 partial reports before the final report, which will be made public on the 17th of August 2006. These have shredded the picture of the Swedish integration policy and have become fuel in the hot discussion about what the investigator calls “a policy that has crashed” (havererat).

The right wing daily paper SvD has published part of Kamali’s proposals from a draft of the future Final Report . The conclusion of this investigation is that Sweden now is characterized as having structural discrimination targeted against persons with foreign backgrounds and that a we-and-them thinking permeates the society.

The two dozen points that the document contains have in common the demand that policy be turned around, from setting demands on the immigrants to the requirement that the society must be changed.

Within five years Swedish authority staffing must reflect what Sweden looks like ethnically. State authorities with more than ten employees must introduce an entire new personnel policy, suggests Masoud Kamali. The objective is that the personnel’s ethnic composition within five years must be changed, so that it reflects what Sweden’s population looks like.

The authority of patrolling police officers to intercept persons on the street and to do “arbitrary intervening” must be limited.

In order to correct the current situation, where persons with background in non-European countries are under-represented, the investigator suggests that the State Authorities introduce positive special treatment. Persons with one parent from Africa, Asia or Latin America will be favoured.

The investigator also wants to abandon the wording in the school law that says that the school rests on a common value-system-base characterized by Christian tradition and occidental humanism. As this idea about a value-system-base is built on an established we-and-them thinking, immigrants are incorrecly considered as alteration-objects, according to the draft.

Masoud Kamali has also suggested that people living in “exposed areas” ( does he mean “immigrant-ghettos”? — translator) by law should get priority in jobs in comparison to others with equivalent qualifications.

Current integration minister Jens Orback has been strongly hesitant about many of these ideas.

Masoud Kamali has refused to comment on the content before the investigation becomes public. Nor does Jens Orback want to comment.

Making sense of this kind of foolishness is difficult. It’s like a man with a burned hand sticking it back into the flame in an attempt to cauterize the wound.

Danish reader Kepiblanc sends this account of what he did on his summer vacation:

This summer I spent my vacation in the Mediterranean island of Corsica. Undoubtedly one of the most beautiful places on the planet. But relax… this isn’t another boring holiday description of snowclad mountains, white beaches, green forests and lovely people. It’s about a flag.

Nowadays Corsica is part of France, and if you search long enough you’ll eventually find an occasional “Tricolore”, for example in the Northern city of Calvi, where the French Foreign Legion has a garrison (2ème Régiment Étranger de Parachutistes at Camp Raffalli).

Nevertheless, the Corsicans are a proud and independent people, so they fly their flag everywhere, be it on buildings, ferries, sports facilities and even Coca-Cola cans. But this flag isn’t the “Drapeau Tricolore”, it is something very different, indeed: A decapitated (!) black head on a white backdrop.

The history behind this unusual symbol goes something like this: All throughout its history Corsica has been plagued by Muslim pirates, mainly the Moors. Hence the local saying: “Nothing good comes from the ocean”. So in order to defend themselves they built watchtowers all along their island’s vast beaches (the concept was later copied by the Irish) and erected spikes with cut-off Moorish heads in order to deter the enemy. Sometimes they paraded those spikes around the island, and the idea had the desired effect: Although surrounded by hostility on all sides — African Barbaristans to the South and Dhimmi-nations to the East (Italy), North (France) and West (El-Andalus) — Corsica is Muslim-free territory, even today (Please don’t tell the EU).

Walking around in Corsican cities is a pleasure: no “youths”, no women in black tents, no burnt-out cars, no vandalism, no screaming and ululating. Pork sausages, beer (“Pietra”) and good wines available everywhere. Music and dancing in the peaceful streets — the good life.

But everything comes to an end: I had to leave for home, eventually. When checking in at Bastia Airport I was taken out for “frisking”. Now — being as Danish as they come — my appearance isn’t exactly what’s called “of Middle Eastern complexion”, so I asked why.

The “flics” chuckled: “Well, you see, we have to do something, right? But we have no Muslims here!” And then they pointed to the overhead Corsican flag.

The Head Schoolmarm herself is hosting the Carnival of Homeschooling this week at the Common Room. I had a quick look-see, and there is a lot of material there to interest a homeschooler, or even a curious passer-by.

A couple of samples…

The Mournful Cry of the Laundry tells the story of “Why We Decided to Homeschool” — the politically correct version. The family is in the process of attempting to adopt a three-year-old child, and the would-be adoptive mother had to figure out a politically acceptable explanation for homeschooling children, one that she could tell the adoption case worker:

We have many, many reasons for homeschooling. Even with a “special needs child”, which every child adopted from foster care over the age of three is considered to be, there are many good reasons for homeschooling. Simple avoiding the stigma of being in a special needs class room is a good start. Of course, there is also the fact that learning can be tailored to the child’s particular interests and learning style. You homeschoolers know the benefits — this is just preaching to the choir.

What I needed, however, was a politically correct version of why we chose to homeschool. Something that wouldn’t put off a person who wears school colored eye glasses. And I needed to come up with this statement quickly, as I was on my way to speak to Barbara [the case worker] when I got her message with this question from my cell phone.

Go over to her post to find out what she told the case worker.

Naturally, I had to look in on a math-related post. One Big Family covers an important topic: Math without tears:

Also, even though you may not have had a great experience with math as a student in school, teaching it to your children may open your eyes to all the enjoyment you missed. When a person is in a classroom, the teacher moves ahead, no matter whether you have grasped a concept or not. At home, you can take as little or as much time as you need. It is amazing, but as you teach you find that you understand more than you ever thought you did, and you actually begin enjoying it, because you feel you can finally do it well.

Amen to that. There is nothing more satisfying than truly mastering a mathematical skill, and teaching math to a child can help you do that.

The Future Baron Bodissey was homeschooled, and his father/teacher had been a math major. Needless to say, the boy learned his math! Maybe not entirely without tears (and some of them were even his own), but, by gum, he learned it!

Get over to the Carnival, and learn more yourself.

For a change of pace, reader LN sends his translation of a story in yesterday’s edition of the Swedish newspaper Expressen about a fully assimilated Muslim immigrant to Sweden:

Iranian Changes Name — Becomes Sverige-Demokrat

He is against mass immigration, and stands topmost on the election list of the Sweden-Democrats in Växjö.

Twenty-one years ago he arrived to Sweden as a political refugee from Iran.

Now, he has also changed his name. From Gharachorloo to Älgemalm.

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“I am entirely integrated in the Swedish society. I have converted from Islam to Christianity,” says Samuel Älgemalm 43, earlier Mohammed Ebrahim Gharachorloo.

Why “Älgemalm”?

“It is a nice combination of nordic nature and culture. I work as a state employed archaeological inventory agent and I often am peeking at the moose up in the woods of Småland.” [Translator’s note: Älgemalm is a clever combination of älg = moose, e = conjunction vowel, and malm = a sandy wooded district.]

Not awkward at all

That he become an active Sverige-Demokrat [resembles the Danish People’s Party — translator] he thinks is not awkward at all.

“It is no strange or hostile xenophobic party. We only want to encourage immigrants to return to their own countries and to their roots if they are unhappy in Sweden.”

Among important election questions, Samuel Älgemalm gives prominence to the government’s sick integration policy, brutal Muslim cultural imperialism in the West, and, on the local plane, the struggle against the building of a mosque in Växjö.

The Sweden-Democrats are aggressively going forward with their candidatures in municipal councils all around the country. They have lined up in 104 municipalities.

Correction from the translator: “The article was taken from KVÄLLS-Posten not from the EXPRESSEN — these two papers have the same URL and the same owner (Bonnier), collaborate — but the former is situated in Malmö, the latter in Stockholm. Their contents are circa 60% different.

Many readers have emailed Gates of Vienna to express their dismay over the treatment of Paul Belien of The Brussels Journal.

I have sent the following letter to the Counselor for Political Affairs in Washington, expressing my dismay and sorrow at Belgium’s scapegoating of a loyal citizen.

We are fortunate to live in America, where we may still question authority, poke fun at the self-important, and warn others of what we see as dangers to our nation’s security and integrity. Those freedoms are disappearing in Europe.

The lights are going out again and this time there will be no one to rekindle them.

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France Chainaye
First Counselor, Political Affairs
Embassy of Belgium to the United States
france.chainaye@diplobel.be

Dear Counselor Chainaye,

As many others have done, I wish to register my objections to what is becoming overt and systematic harassment of M. Paul Belien of The Brussels Journal.

It is amazing to discover that an educated person is not permitted to school his or her children at home in Belgium – or at least he may not do so if he says or writes things with which his government disagrees. I cannot imagine how Belgium can call itself a democracy when it resorts to such petty tactics to silence its critics.

I have seen editorials in which M. Belien has been called names. I have read his posts describing his visits to the police station. And, sadly, I read what the Belgian cardinal said about M. Belien some months ago.

He has been blamed for any number of incidents that have no bearing on what he writes or believes and the obvious scapegoating is a black mark against Belgium’s record of tolerance.

Any democracy that silences its critics puts itself in jeopardy. A country which cannot tolerate dissent will eventually so circumscribe the limits of what is permitted to be said that it will no longer be recognizably a democracy. That is precisely what happened with your 1993 law on racism. It diminished Belgium and will continue to do so as long as it remains codified.

M. Belien is an asset to Belgium. He has a first-rate mind and his loyalty to his country is without question.

It is sad beyond words that in order to be able to practice any real free speech worthy of the name, this man – like Oriana Fallaci – will probably have to leave his country in order to be permitted to express his beliefs and principles. This will be Belgium’s and Europe’s loss; it will someone else’s gain. I do hope he chooses America as a refuge. He would be most welcome here.

History repeats its gloomy circuit, and the smart, the inventive, the people with energy and initiative are leaving the continent in droves. As you well know, Antwerp and Brussels are both experiencing a decline in their native population. And the population in general is ageing.

Unfortunately, your country has chosen this path and it seems nothing will deter it. As you no doubt well understand, those like M. Belien will continue to leave until you have a huge pyramid of ageing, retired people while the young will have fled to greener, freer pastures.

M. Belien may have come to regret his prophetic role – a prophet is often without honor in his own country. However, he has done Belgium a service by speaking out. Those who fear dissent will silence him, and we will bear witness to that.

Respectfully,
Dymphna (of Gheel)
Gates of Vienna Blog

We have posted frequently on the seemingly innocuous religious organization, the Muslims of America, and their jihad wing, Jamaat ul-Fuqra. CP and I have repeatedly emphasized JF’s habit of forming security companies as a tactic to further the group’s shadowy goals.

The Politics of CP has posted a new exclusive investigative report today about a security company called EPAI Protective Services, Inc. (Executive Protection Academy International), which is associated with the Jamaat ul-Fuqra compound Madinah in Georgia:

It is known that one of the modus operandi of Fuqra cells has been the operation of security companies. They are a means to earn easy money for the organization. They can also provide privileged access to facilities, information, and weapons. Fuqra is currently known to operate security companies in NY and VA. They had done so in Colorado years ago until their compound was raided and their cell was broken up. Operatives of Fuqra’s security companies have been known to conduct brazen surveillance of various targets…

EPAI provides security for several locations in the Atlanta area including a trucking facility and a closed-down Ford plant. A search of the Hoovers business database indicates the company has six employees and sales of $100K. A subsequent search of Georgia security licenses connected to EPAI yielded six names.

The EPAI website tries to suggest the company is larger than records indicate. They claim to have an extensive domestic and international network.

CP points out the alarming proximity of EPAI to Atlanta Airport, which is one of the largest hubs on the East Coast.

In his commentary he says this:

In the world of modern jihad, most of today’s American Fuqra operatives are nothing more than street thugs on the hustle. However, it must recognized that there could be deeper-level covert operatives in the group involved in more serious activities. In Pakistan, Fuqra is known as a jihadi organization. In the U.S., they are rarely even acknowledged. Yet, the organization has existed here for two-and-a-half decades and many of its basic practices have not changed. They have simply shifted geographically and have become more adept at passing themselves off as moderates. The fact remains that their leadership continues to maintain peripheral if not direct connections to known terrorists and terrorist groups.

The infrastructure that Fuqra has established has taken time to assemble. Originally established as a militant organization, you can bet the network that has been built will be exploited to support militant activities, either directly or indirectly. Support activities can take many forms, including the providing of false documentation, safe houses, financing, training, weapons, logistics, security, surveillance, personnel, etc.

Back in the 1980s, when Jamaat ul-Fuqra was first building up its networks in the US and Canada and acquiring its criminal recruits, it was almost brazenly violent, running guns, blowing up Hindu temples, and assassinating its enemies.

Sometime towards the end of the decade, however, the group quieted down. The reasons for this remain speculative, but one rumor says that Sheikh Gilani, the group’s founder and emir, became alarmed at his subordinates’ activities, and reined them in to protect his long-term plans.

Jamaat ul-Fuqra does its recruiting in America’s prisons, so its adherents tend to be functionally indistinguishable from common criminals, except for their observance of Islam and the transfer of 30% of their income to Sheikh Gilani in Pakistan.

They run guns and engage in fraud and money-laundering. They set up security companies, which gives them a legitimate excuse to acquire weapons and surveillance equipment. Think about these fellows, moving in and out of banks, carrying cash in armored cars, setting up video surveillance cameras for their customers…

It may be that the Sheikh is content to be the emir of a lucrative criminal enterprise, and, much like the leaders of the IRA, has metamorphosed from a revolutionary terrorist into a Mafia don.

But I wouldn’t count on it. I hope the Feds are watching these guys very, very carefully.

All eleven Egyptian exchange students have been rounded up and are in custody. Three were arrested on Friday in Des Moines, and yesterday the last two were picked up here in Virginia. According to the Richmond Times-Dispatch:

The last two of the 11 Egyptian exchange students who failed to show up at their college program were apprehended Sunday in Richmond, Va., customs officials said.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrested Mohamed Saleh Ahmed Maray, 20, and Mohamed Ibrahim Fouaad El Shenawy, 17, at an apartment building in Richmond on Sunday night. Virginia State Police and the Richmond Police helped locate the students.

Last Wednesday, one of the Egyptian students was arrested in Minneapolis and two were detained in Manville, N.J. On Thursday, two were arrested in Dundalk, Md., and one was arrested at O’Hare International Airport in Chicago. Three more were arrested Friday in Des Moines, Iowa.

And then the Mandatory No-Terror Disclaimer_TM:

None of the students is considered a terrorism risk.

No, they aren’t; not any more.

Presumably this is the last we’ll hear on this topic. Due process will be diligently followed; the Egyptian youths will retain counsel, have their day in court, and be deported. Anything else behind their story will be consigned to obscurity, along with Joel Hinrichs and all the other little “no-connection-to-terrorism” jihad events.

I don’t think any further information on these guys will come to light in my lifetime. But, to you youngsters among our readers: Watch for the comprehensive histories of the war that come in thirty or forty years’ time, assuming there are any of us left to write them. Maybe there will be a footnote in the 2049 edition of The Comprehensive History of the Great Islamic Jihad about “the Egyptian ‘exchange student’ incident of 2006, in which eleven junior Al-Qaeda operatives were tasked with…”

You fill in the rest.

What’s that?

It’s what you find here at Gates of Vienna, according to one R. Porrofatto in the comments to a post yesterday on alicublog:

As you point out, the commenters there [at TigerHawk] slobber as expected, but I think this from Gates of Vienna takes the prize for testicular lunacy:

If this were WW2, we wouldn’t be worrying about the feelings of Muslims, or castigating ourselves as racists for attempting to defend ourselves. We’d be girding our loins to defeat the Ragheads just as we battled the Nips and the Krauts to an unconditional surrender.

Admit it — you winced at my last sentence, didn’t you? That illustrates the depth and breadth of the problem we now face.

So we’re not only insufficently militarized, but too decent to acquire the strategic bigotry and racism that will ensure victory.

Boy oh boy, Mr. or Ms. Porrofatto sure has our number! Bigotry and Racism “R” Us!

At least we’ve got the testiculars with which to be lunàtic.

Well, as Paul at Wizbang once said:

You know you’re being effective when you make the moonbats bark.