Just when you think you’ve seen the worst the MSM can do, just when you think they’ve hit bottom with their reutering of photographs and peddling of Hizbullah propaganda, just when you think they can’t come up with anything worse trying to keep Republicans from being elected…

That’s when CNN starts peddling terrorist snuff videos.

These videos aren’t just any snuff videos. They’re tapes made in Iraq by Islamic terrorists, of American soldiers being shot by snipers.

This is the lead story on the CNN website this morning.
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It’s almost impossible to find the words to express how disgusting CNN is. This is the high-minded network that, out of respect for the religious sensibilities of Muslims, could not bring itself to show the Danish Mohammed cartoons.

But out of respect for our country, our military, and the families of the victims, they are airing videos of those slain soldiers made by the people who killed them.

Oh yes, they make sure that they black out the exact moment when the bullet takes out the soldier. That way nobody will be disturbed — one moment he’s standing there alive and warm, the next he’s just another dead body lying in the dust of Iraq. No big deal.

And CNN has its usual sanctimonious justification for its behavior: the terrorist group doing these despicable deeds wants to negotiate with the United States:

Almost 2,800 Americans have been killed so far in Iraq and one of the most dangerous insurgent opponents is the sniper. CNN has obtained graphic video from the Islamic Army of Iraq, one of the most active insurgent organizations in Iraq, showing its sniper teams targeting U.S. troops. The Islamist Army says it wants talks with the United States and some Islamist Internet postings call for a P.R. campaign aimed at influencing the American public. The video is disturbing to watch but CNN believes the story, shocking as it is, needs to be told.

Does CNN think this is a valid way to get the United States to negotiate with the Islamic Army of Iraq? Is it proud of its part in bringing the “two sides” to the negotiating table?

This is yet another transparent ploy to hurt the Bush administration and the Republicans in the upcoming elections. Let’s make sure it doesn’t work.

If you were thinking of sitting out the election — as I have been, from time to time — because of the disgusting and craven behavior of the Republicans, please reconsider. Go down to the polling place, hold your nose, and pull the lever next to “R” for every name you see.

Not voting this year would reward CNN for its behavior, just as negotiating with these scum would reward them for killing American soldiers.

Danny Glover of National Journal reports that the DOI’s Chief Information Officer, W. Hord Tipton, said this in a speech yesterday morning:

“Blogs just scare the pants off me, particularly when Interior people want to launch blogs and take ownership of those types of things.” he said. “We don’t allow people to go to blogs unless we know where they are, who they are and what have you.”

Whoo-ee! Prepare to live without trousers, Mr. Tipton!
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According to Danny, Mr. Tipton also referred to Sean’s “Banned at DOI” logo (see above) in his speech. Congratulations, Sean! You got their attention!

There are a lot of people out there who should be scared of blogs. Information has escaped from the control of the Anointed. The results do not always reflect well on people who are used to being shielded from public scrutiny.

Mr. Tipton may be pantsless, but the Emperor is Naked.

In case anyone missed it, below is the investigative report I posted at Politics Central on Monday.

Last Wednesday an urgent email arrived from a woman I’ll call Penpal, an employee at the Department of the Interior. She alerted me to the selective blocking of conservative blogs on the internal network at DOI, and wanted to get the word out to the right-leaning side of the blogosphere. Since she had no contact information for Charles Johnson at Little Green Footballs, she wrote to me instead.

She soon followed up with a list of blocked and unblocked blogs. Among those blocked were LGF, Gates of Vienna, Michelle Malkin, Belmont Club, and a number of other prominent conservative sites. Left unblocked were Daily Kos, Atrios, Democratic Underground, and other lefty favorites. “In fact,” she said, “every blog linked to off of DailyKos seems to work.”

I quickly put up a post about it and contacted Charles, who posted his own account and updated it with additional information. It quickly spread from there, passing through Instapundit, Atlas Shrugs, Michelle Malkin, and many other blogs, forums, and news sites.

That evening Roger Simon asked me to do an investigation and report on the subject for Pajamas Media. This sounded like a job for the 910 Group. I started a topic there asking for help investigating the internet-filtering software used by the Department of the Interior.

By the next morning, the intrepid 910 sleuths had tips and information about the software used, the way it was likely to have been implemented, and details about the internal organization and contact information in DOI.
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The Interior Department uses software written and supported by a company called 8e6. Its head office is in California, and I am in Virginia, so there was no point in calling them up for several hours. However, there are two branch offices on the East Coast, and I was able to contact the sales representative at the New York branch of 8e6. He had little technical information on their product, but promised to contact headquarters and have them call me.

I then placed phone calls to the Department of the Interior, beginning with the office of the Chief Information Officer, Hord Tipton. I spoke with his secretary and explained my mission. She took my number and said that Mr. Tipton would return my call.

When California office hours arrived, Eric Lundbohm, 8e6’s Vice President of Marketing, contacted me. He was pleasant and informative about his company’s product, explaining that 8e6 sells software for network use. It classifies websites and provides updates; however, it does not specify which sites will be blocked; the end user performs that function.

This made sense —I had already read the company’s 8e6 white paper. I asked him whether any changes to the software settings made by employees at the sub-group levels were automatically communicated to the upper levels. He said that they were, and as long as the administrators at the top read the logs, they will be aware of all such changes.

“In other words,” I concluded, “they either know what their subordinates are doing, or they are incompetent.”

When asked, he declined to tell me the who his company contact was at DOI. However, he was willing to say that it was “at the network administrator level.”

The next task was to locate the Network Administrator for the Department of the Interior. Web searches failed to turn up a name or phone number, so my only hope was to find someone at DOI who would refer me to the appropriate person.

Mr. Tipton, the CIO, never returned my call, so the next step was to call the Secretary of the Interior, Dirk Kempthorne. I had to go through two gatekeepers for Secretary Kempthorne. The second one, after saying, “Oh, I know what you’re calling about! We’ve had enquiries about it from two other people today.” Evidently the word had already got out to the media.

The second gatekeeper passed me on to the Director of Communications, Mr. Frank Quimby. He was pleasant, and explained that the Department most emphatically did not selectively block conservative blogs. “We block all blogs. We’re still getting the glitches out of the system, so some get through here and there, but we’re blocking all blogs.”

I told him that I would report what he said, but that it strained credulity, because the chance of the system randomly blocking blogs that just happen to have a conservative political content — and not blocking liberal ones — was so small as to be negligible. Someone, somewhere had to have done this intentionally.

Mr. Quimby passed me on to to his deputy, Mr. Ed Meagher, who was more familiar with the technical aspects of their internet filtering system. Mr. Meagher was not as friendly as Mr. Quimby — he bristled at any suggestion that the Interior Department was selectively blocking blogs based on their political orientation. “I can guarantee you 100% that we do not do that,” he told me. “We block all blogs.”

When I explained to him what Penpal had said, Mr. Meagher became quite vehement. “It didn’t happen. If your sources say that, then your sources are lying. Nobody here ever did anything like that.”

That was as unequivocal a denial as one can get

He refused to refer me to his network administrator, nor would he allow me to come into a DOI office and test the system myself, because that would “breach security”. So I returned to my sources and my network security experts for more information.

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In addition to Penpal, I had a second source at the Department of the Interior who confirmed the selective blocking, but would not go public or consent to be quoted. A third source turned up at Pagan Vigil, where the blogger NeoWayland said this:

Ordinarily I would put this in the internet rumor file. But as chance would have it, I do know some people who work at the Department of Interior. Sure enough, it looks like the right side of the blogosphere is being blocked while the left side is wide open.

Three separate people at DOI were apparently lying, if we are to accept Mr. Meagher’s version of events. I wrote back to Penpal, and she was quite irate at being called a liar:

As far as the guy insisting categorically that all blogs are blocked, he’s lying himself! I’d guess he’s also technically incompetent. Maybe he even thinks that they are all supposed to be blocked, but they aren’t. Of course, IT Security Managers with DOI are complete idiots. [detailed technical examples followed here] Until recently, the division of DOI that I work for ran all their stuff in the complete free and clear. No firewalls, no filters, nothing. Anything and everything on the network was free for anyone at all to take who was interested.

As of last Thursday evening, October 12, the situation was still the same.

In all fairness, Mr. Meagher is not necessarily lying when he makes his assertions; it’s quite possible that his subordinates are assuring him that what he says is true. My sources have no particular reason, absent sheer malice, to fabricate these tales, whereas Mr. Meagher has a definite interest in maintaining the purity of his position.

Occam’s razor tells me that my sources are truthful, and that Deputy Director Meagher is mistaken.

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How does the 8e6 software work?

The general idea is this: the program classifies websites, by their URLs and/or their IP addresses, according to a certain schema that includes news, educational, pornography, gambling, blogs, opinion, and so on. The end user can choose to block any of these categories within the network and its subdomains. The user may also choose, for business reasons, to list some websites specifically as exceptions, and these will be allowed through.

Mr. Quimby had said as much, implying that the Department of the Interior has a business reason to make exceptions of Daily Kos and the Huffington Post.

That doesn’t make any sense.

He also told me that blogs often have obscene or hateful content, which may earn them a “Hate Site” or “Pornography” classification, and hence cause them to be blocked.

Once again, that doesn’t make sense, as anyone who has visited Democratic Underground will attest.

Florence, an investigator at the 910 Group, reported:

It seems that 8e6 creates categories, identifies sites to go in those categories and then daily provides a download of updates them for all clients (who can select from categories to block within a common database). There is a correction functionality, but it is used for everyone. They use human content analysts who will review a proposed correction and recategorize if they agree, then resend the new categorization in the next update. There’s even a function to submit a site (presumably to be blocked but maybe for recategorization as well).

And here are the categories: Note that categories seem to be for things to INCLUDE specifically, not just to EXCLUDE – the list can work either way. Again, only if I’m reading this correctly…

One scenario (I think

Section 15:		Dubious/Unsavory
Section 31:		Hate & Discrimination
Section 48:		Message Boards
Section 54:		Obscene/Tasteless
Section 63:		Political Opinion (and note the language used to define this category – whoever wrote this does not suffer from Bush Derangement Syndrome)
Section 74:		R-Rated
Section 79:		Social Opinion

Why this seems unlikely: it appears that the content analysts at 8e6 actually assess these recategorizations. Wouldn’t they catch a pattern of, say, conservative blogs all being identified as obscene/tasteless?

Good news: they should be able to search their database for specific websites and track when they were submitted, by whom and what category (if any) they are currently filed under.

It doesn’t make sense that 8e6 (and other software vendors) would classify conservative blogs differently from liberal ones. They surely have customers on either side of the political divide, and one or the other group would be bound to object.

I had an email exchange with another internet filtering software expert, who had this to say:

We use a different product; each vendor will define categories differently. It’s a little like an antivirus program; each company has a different programming technique for detecting viruses and the same is true of proxy devices. The filters get updated as well, for example we see adult sites that are listed in the “None” category, which means it is not defined to a particular category. We can submit lists of sites we block and they get updated in the next filter release.

I ran a report on some of the sites you listed to see how our proxy device categorized them, only a couple of the “lefty” sites had any traffic over a 72 hour period:

Gates of Vienna:		Political/Activist
Little Green Footballs:		Computers/Internet
Michelle Malkin:		News/Media
Power Line:		Education
DailyKos:		Political/Activist
The Huffington Post:		News/Media

Our device actually looks at the content of the page, so each page can have sub categories. For example, Michelle Malkin’s site lists the text/html as “news” but certain images on the site show as “web advertisements”. Power Line also had a sub category of “Blogs/Newsgroups”.

The point is that the right-leaning sites are probably classified as blogs and the left sites might be classified news/political. Democratic Underground is probably listed as a forum. So if you block the category on the 8e6 device called “blogs”, it’s going to block everything it considers a blog. The only suggestion I can make would be to change META tags in HTML to not list keywords such as blog, assuming that’s how the 8e6 filter list is generated. However that may work on one type of device but not another.

Is everything clear now?

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The Department of the Interior’s Internet Usage Policy does not specifically address political content. Its pincipal concerns are pornography and gambling sites, which — as any employer can tell you — are the main internet activities draining away employee productivity.

There is certainly nothing wrong with any employer, governmental or otherwise, blocking its employees’ access to blogs. But selective blocking of certain blogs based on their political leanings is bound to raise eyebrows.

For several days after my post went up, people in various parts of the federal government emailed me or left comments detailing their own departments’ policies. I heard from Treasury, Justice, the Air Force, and others. They all said more or less the same thing: all of their agencies blocked blogs, but some blogs seemed to be able to break through the filters. However, besides Interior, none of the exceptions lined up within a particular political affiliation.

I consulted a network expert, a friend of mine named Joe who runs his own consulting company. He’s very familiar with internet filtering software, and he also has extensive experience with network administration.

“Here’s what happened”, he said. “The department started blocking certain categories of websites, and then made a list of exceptions that would be allowed through the filter. That’s a long list, and it would be passed down the food chain from the Network Administrator through his subordinates until it reached the poor schmoe at the bottom of the heap who would have to do all the data entry to list the exceptions.

“Now imagine this guy: he just happens to be a left-winger, and likes to hang out at Daily Kos and Atrios during his downtime. He realizes that won’t be able to do that any more, so he adds his favorite sites to the list of exceptions, and then that he can continue with his recreational reading.

“He thinks that nobody will notice, or that his superiors are too stupid to ever figure it out. In any case, it never occurs to him that there are conservatives at DOI who will notice and object.”

I like this explanation. It’s simple, it’s elegant, and it satisfies Occam’s razor. It posits the least amount of conspiracy — at most, a couple of flunkies in the basement of DOI taking action on their own behalf — and it doesn’t require that my sources be liars.

A grand conspiracy at the top of DOI is unlikely. If they wanted to screen out conservative content — say, in order to keep their employees from learning about the Harry Reid caper — they could block all blogs, just as the other federal agencies are doing.

On the other hand, Joe’s theory indicates that the higher-ups in the Department of the Interior are not getting good information from their subordinates. Instead of stonewalling inquiries from the media, Mr. Meagher’s interests would have been better served by looking into the details of the situation. Calling your own employees liars — the very people you consented to hire — is not necessarily the wisest policy.

It’s time for an Interior dialogue.

I’d like to thank the dedicated folks at the 910 Group, particularly Florence, for their invaluable help with this report. Joe and Jolauna at Comperio Technologies provided extensive technical information. I’m also grateful to all the people in different federal agencies who took the trouble to contact me with accounts of what goes on in their departments.

Muhammad Yunus has finally won The Nobel Prize for Economics. It’s about time.

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I no longer remember when I first read his book. I know I found it in the “New Books” section at the library, probably in the late 1990s. Having worked with poor women in the past, the dust jacket intrigued me, so I put the book into my stack of borrowings.

Banker to the Poor: Micro-Lending and the Battle Against World Poverty was so memorable that some time later I bought the book myself. And I began to make donations to Dr. Yunus’ project.

As I recall from my reading, he studied economics, having returned to Bangladesh after getting his doctorate in the US. He sent his students out to study poverty in Chittagong, and based on their papers, he became interested in finding a way to get around the usurious money-lenders that poor women were forced to bargain with in order to buy the materials they needed to make crafts – baskets, chairs, etc., – to sell at the market, only to turn around and give most of it back to the money lenders in a vicious and seemingly unbreakable cycle.

Dr. Yunus realized his great big doctorate wasn’t doing any good if he couldn’t use it as a lever to change the economic conditions of the very poor, the desperately poor, in his country. As I recall from the book, he started small – his own money, and less than a hundred dollars. This was long before “Grameen Bank” was a fully formed idea, much less a successful enterprise. All he wanted to do, originally, was to intervene in a fundamentally unjust situation.

As anyone who has worked with the poor and marginalized knows, it does no good to play Dr. Bountiful. So there had to be rules about how much money could be borrowed, when it would be repaid, and who would supervise the program. Dr. Yunus would set up micro (and I do mean micro) loans to craftswomen in order to free them from the money lender schemes. Improvising as he went along, he had the women join small groups of other borrowers. They met to discuss business methods, repayment plans, and just to encourage one another. This took courage, both on the part of Dr. Yunus and his first borrowers; the moneylenders were not happy with this new arrangement.
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All of the above is what I recall from reading the book. Considering my retention rate on what I read (which is nil), it is obvious Dr. Yunus made quite an impression on me. Now, this from his website:

The origin of Grameen Bank can be traced back to 1976 when Professor Muhammad Yunus, Head of the Rural Economics Program at the University of Chittagong, launched an action research project to examine the possibility of designing a credit delivery system to provide banking services targeted at the rural poor.

That’s amazing, considering the ink had barely dried on Yunus’ doctoral degree when he began his research on the problem. However, he wasted no time and things were shortly up and running:

The action research demonstrated its strength in Jobra (a village adjacent to Chittagong University) and some of the neighboring villages during 1976-1979. With the sponsorship of the central bank of the country and support of the nationalized commercial banks, the project was extended to Tangail district (a district north of Dhaka, the capital city of Bangladesh) in 1979. With the success in Tangail, the project was extended to several other districts in the country. In October 1983, the Grameen Bank Project was transformed into an independent bank by government legislation. Today Grameen Bank is owned by the rural poor whom it serves. Borrowers of the Bank own 90% of its shares, while the remaining 10% is owned by the government.

There is a strong moral foundation to Grameen. In addition to signing on to the repayment requirements, there are “The Sixteen Decisions of Grameen Bank.” All of them are geared toward self-improvement, community responsibility, and family health.

Here is Number Twelve, entitled “We shall not inflict any injustice on anyone, neither shall we allow anyone to do so.” To me, this illustration is meant to portray the old moneylenders and how they harmed those who used their services. It reminds members not to fall back into the cycle which had kept them in grinding poverty. It wasn’t for nothing that Grameen won The Fast Company/Monitor Social Capitalist Award for 2005 and 2006:

The Fast Company/Monitor Social Capitalist Awards is the only award program that quantitatively measures a non-profit group’s innovation and social impact, as well as the viability and sustainability of its business model. Grameen Foundation has twice been recognized for its groundbreaking work in expanding the reach of microfinance around the world while applying innovative technology to increase efficiency and provide new opportunities for the poor.

It is also has a Four Star Charity Navigator rating. In other words, this is an idea worth your money.

Grameen is slowly becoming a global phenomenon. It is even here, in the US, in two projects. As I recall from my original reading, when Dr. Yunus first came to America to explain his project and to recruit the poor, his ideas didn’t/couldn’t translate to government bureaucrats used to “working with” the poor. They sent him small business projects, not poor single parents trying to make a go of things with a craft or talent they thought might be marketable. It took a few years for Grameen (“the village”) to translate into American economic terms. For an example of how it can work cross-culturally, read Kevin’s story.

A several-days-late hat tip to Eteraz via email: You thought I didn’t know about this wonderful man, didn’t you? See, even a jihadiphobe can have a Muslim hero. I knew about Dr. Yunus long before I ever heard of the evil CAIR or the Ummah. Long live Grameen – capitalist to the core.

October 6th was a red letter Gates of Vienna win. “Peace” and War on an Autumn Afternoon took first place.

ShrinkWrapped shared second place with Joshua Pundit for There Are No Words and The Horrors of Club Gitmo… and Camp Pendleton, respectively.

By a curious coincidence the first and second place winners on the non-Council side were both ones I wanted to nominate for this section.

I ended up nominating the winner, Rants and Raves, for his first-hand Observations on Arabs.

But first I lingered a long time over One Cosmos’ brilliant On Perversions, Pedophiles, and the Homophobes of the Left. I believe that’s the post where he refers to the “psychological Left.” Great term. I was happy to see that someone else nominated him anyway.

Everything else is still at The Watcher’s Place, including an entry by Michelle Malkin and an excellent Wretchard post.

Enjoy, amigos.

Ramadan rages on.

Paul Belien posted this short piece over the weekend:

Yesterday night, a police officer was hospitalised after being hit in the face with a stone in the Parisian suburb of Epinay-sur-Seine. According to the police union, the officer and a colleague fell into an ambush and were surrounded by about 30 youths, some wearing masks. The youths blocked the police vehicle with their cars and sprayed the officers with tear gas. The two officers escaped after firing their pistols into the air.

Similar incidents occur regularly. Already 2,500 policemen have been wounded so far this year. The taboo of attacking officers on patrol has indeed been broken. It looks as if some want to kill at least one policeman during this year’s Ramadan. The French police also registered 10 to 12 anti-Jewish incidents per day in the past 30 days throughout the country.

M. Belien notes elsewhere that this situation has been labeled an “infitada” by The Telegraph. It well may be. That is, it could be a coordinated series of attacks designed to bring down the rule of French law in the Muslim banlieues of Paris suburbs. And what would fill the vacuum left by the infitada’s victory?

Would it be peace and harmony and sharia law?
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Probably not. More likely, France would have little Gaza Strip clones encapsulated here and there near French cities. Having finished off the police, they would proceed to tear one another apart, just as the Palestinians do now.

In this second post above, “Civil War in Europe – Hardly Mentioned in the Press,” Brussels Journal gives details from The Telegraph of the necessity for armored cars when police go into these areas. Does this sound familiar? Does it sound like Iraq in areas of Baghdad? All that the French “youths” are missing are the necessary IEDs. How long do you think it will be before they acquire them?

In the opening Belien quote, I emphasized the breaking of a taboo: the continual, deliberately planned attacks on the French police. Two thousand five hundred police have been wounded in the line of duty just in the past year. For Americans, it is hard to comprehend these numbers, or to understand why a country would permit this large scale decimation of those who serve to keep the peace. Nor could we imagine our police officers “firing into the air” after having been stoned and tear-gassed. Were that to happen here, an emergency would have long since been declared. The National Guard would be in there, rounding up the perpetrators. Fellow police officers from other cities would be offering assistance. To coin a phrase, we would be up in arms.

Here is the key phrase: a taboo has been broken. Successfully smashed. It is now permissible, in some places in France, to attack police officers with impunity. American cities have had their share of police-citizen conflict. In the recent past, Cincinnati comes to mind. And in the ‘60’s and ‘70’s the rapid expansion of expectations and of cultural changes brought on conflagrations that scarred our historical memory — on both sides of the divide.

But there is a large difference in this country: ongoing efforts to resolve long-standing racial tensions began immediately and continue to this day. Community groups and municipal authorities, while they clash, have an unspoken limit on permissible levels of violence. Police are punished for excessive violence in the course of their duties, though some African American communities would declare that they often get away with more than we know or can change. Nonetheless, the attempts to ameliorate the situation have gone on for at least a generation now.

And the taboo against attacking the peacekeepers remains in place in the US. That may be changing in Los Angeles, which like Paris, has taken in enormous numbers of unassimilated aliens. The “no-go” Muslim areas in France, the Netherlands, Sweden, and Norway (and perhaps Britain) haven’t a parallel in the United States. At least not yet.

As is often the case, California is the cutting edge for cultural change, and we may see similar situations in L.A. before too much longer. Similar, but not exact: the language of the unassimilated will be Spanish, the “youths” will be Mexican or Central Americans. And like Europe, we will have brought it upon ourselves; in our case, it will be the result of our lazy failure to demand respect for our sovereignty and our borders.

We do not hear what private French citizens are doing to protect themselves. We do know the cultural response in the American southwest to invasion. We’ve been there, done that. And we’ll do it again.

However it turns out, I know one thing: the deliberate wounding of 2,500 police officers would never go unaddressed by the citizens who, in exchange for obeying the law, expect protection. If that taboo is broken here, the results will be different. The Civil War in the US will have a different complexion.

On the other hand, we are blessed: we do not have an emasculating European Union to get in the way of our survival. Unless you want to count “hate speech”, the EU sees no need for taboos. None at all.

UPDATE: One of our commenters, Emerson Twain, has given much more information on Ellsion, the CAIR Muslim candidate for Congress:

The 5th district Minnesota congressional race is a hot one and has garnered blogospherean ink all across the political spectrum. The race for this long-time Democratic, but now open seat, pits newcomers Alan Fine (Republican endorsed, and a Jew coincidently), and Tammy Lee (Independence Party endorsed) against the endorsed favorite, Democrat Keith Ellison, to succeed retiring Democrat Martin Olaf Sabo. Ellison, 43, raised Roman Catholic in Michigan, is a Muslim “revert” since his undergraduate college days in Indiana, and a former Nation of Islam adherent. He is currently fasting his way through the campaign which happens to coincide with Ramadan.

The local inclusion crowd (the majority of the electorate) of progressive puritans, anti-war lefties and universal health carichondriacs can hardly wait to ram this election home, thus proving to the world they are the most diverse people on earth and will do just about anything to prove to George Bush just how much they hate him.

Few, however, have crossed the mental threshold of the election itself beyond the swearing-in ceremony. It is a strange and troubling thought experiment worth probing in this most unique situation.

If Keith Ellison is indeed elected as 5th Minnesota district representative to the Congress of the United States he will become quite suddenly I expect, the defacto spokeman for U.S. Muslims, by virtue of being an elected representative to the U.S. government. He will certainly join the Black Caucus. On questions of Islam, at least initially, all eyes will be on him, both nationally and internationally. Should he win, look for CNN, the BBC, the NY Times, Al Jazeera and others of the international media to come knocking at his door. One wonders what the electorate of the 5th District, which includes the city of Minneapolis, will think of this. Osama bin Laden, deep in his cave will know the name of Keith Ellison and where he lives. What will be his views on jihad? On Sergeant Hasan Akbar? What about the the honor killings of women that are sweeping the infidel lands being colonized by Muslims? Where does he stand on the imposition of Shari’a law in infidel lands, the U.S., for example? What about the veiling controversy in the UK, in Jack Straw’s District? And that’s just for starters.

How will he reconcile the concepts of American liberty with the inshallah fatalism of the mosque? Will he have the inclination or strength to stand against the bullies and killers in the camp of Islam who seek to stifle free speech? Or will he censor himself and expect us to do likewise (as John Sobieski has suggested)? And what if his answers thrust him into the camp of apostates? He almost certainly would not consider himself as such, but its the shahids with the butcher knives and guns who decide these matters. Is he ready for this? Is Minneapolis ready for this?

I would also expect to see even more Muslims flocking to Minneapolis (tens of thousands of Somalis now), and with them the attendant conflicts over Shari’a in our institutions.

And if this happens, I would then expect to see Islamic issues eventually begin to crowd out the other issues of Minneapolis ward politics. I think Minneapolis will be stunned.

Furthermore, after the election, will the Ummah then consider the 5th Minnesota Congressional District to be Islamic land, and all that entails?

Minnesota, weep for your children.

According to Joel Mowbray at Real Clear Politics, the House of Representatives may have its first Muslim member come November. This guy has quite a history, too. First, he was a member of the Nation of Islam, our own home-grown pre-9/11 “Muslims.”

Remember back then, when we didn’t take this group seriously? Sure, the Nation of Islam was anti-Semitic and vaguely sinister, but hey, they seemed to be redeeming a few of the lost human beings that the Democrats’ welfare scam had created. Those guys — many of them former felons and druggie gang members — were living reformed, disciplined lives. If they wanted to believe in Allah, well…America is a large tent, is it not? What harm could it do? Right?

That was then…a “then” so long ago that the world which existed in the summer of 2001 seems to belong to another century.
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Now comes Keith Ellison, former member of the Nation of Islam, running for Minnesota’s Fifth District. This candidate is a piece of work. Here are a few of the jewels in his crown:

• He apologized to the local Jewish community, claiming that (a) he was never a member of the NOI, and besides he didn’t know they were anti-Semitic (in other words, he must need the local Jewish vote to win?). What he fails to mention is his words at a hearing in 1997 in which he claimed that to be quoting a government official’s comment that “Jews are the most racist white people.” (and here I thought that was a designation reserved for rednecks. The Joos must be playing catch-up here. Or maybe Ellison was referring to Southern Jews? That must be it.— Dymphna)
• Ellison is a good buddies with Nihad Awad. Who is he, you ask? Why Awad is the co-founder of CAIR, and these two folks go way back: all the way to the University of Minnesota in the 1980’s.
• Out of the goodness of his heart, Awad (CAIR, in other words) is pouring riches into the coffers of Ellison’s campaign, to the tune of at least $45,000.00 since July. Of course, in true CAIR tradition (lie, lie, lie), all of this is denied. “Money? What money?”

So the Democrats are stuck. How do they defend this guy? Easy: locally, they use the usual Democratic tactic of attempting to maim the messenger. Any mention of this questionable candidacy is immediately ruled off the table as “racist, partisan, bigoted…blah, blah, blah” This disinformation campaign isn’t difficult when the media is already in your pocket. Thus, Mowbray reports on the Minneapolis Star Tribune columnist who claimed that Elllison is being attacked simply because he’s a Muslim.The Dem-controlled media has excelled (if that is the word for such lame rhetoric) for so long in reductio ad absurdum attacks that it has left the field of reality to the rest of us. It’s embarrassing to watch, really.

Meanwhile, the larger party is caught between a rock and a hard place. Dick Durbin of Illinois and Charles Schumer of New York both see CAIR as suspect. Schumer flatly states that it has “ties to terrorism.” Mowbray notes:

Sen. Schumer has special disdain for Awad and CAIR’s other co-founder, Omar Ahmad, saying in a 2003 hearing that both men have “intimate connections with Hamas.”

The words most damning to CAIR, though, have been uttered by its co-founders. At Barry University in Florida in 1994, Awad declared, “I’m in support of the Hamas movement.” Addressing a youth session at the 1999 Islamic Association of Palestine convention in Chicago, Ahmad glorified suicide bombers who “kill themselves for Islam”: “Fighting for freedom, fighting for Islam, that is not suicide. They kill themselves for Islam.”

But even if the national party doesn’t call Ellison on the carpet for his ties to CAIR, and even if they don’t support him, this mole may well win a seat in Congress. Don’t forget, Minnesota’s Fifth Congressional District voted 71% for Kerry. They’re likely to find Ellison much to their liking. So then it will be up to the Democrats in Washington to keep him in line, and to try to convince the rest of us that they are not really the party of treason and that their candidates really will make America a safer place.

One thing’s for sure: Democrats ceased being the Party of Reason generations ago. Somewhere along the front lines of the War on Poverty they morphed into outright socialists and haven’t looked backwards since. That’s because they’ve been too busy moving sideways — always left, always a bit loonier than they were the year before.

Hat tip: Chas’ Compilation

A reader has brought to our attention this document from 2004, in which the Office of the Inspector General reported on the OIG’s success in carrying out one of its more important responsibilities:

Section 1001 of the USA PATRIOT Act (Patriot Act), Public Law 107-56, directs the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) in the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ or Department) to undertake a series of actions related to claims of civil rights or civil liberties violations allegedly committed by DOJ employees. It also requires the OIG to provide semiannual reports to Congress on the implementation of the OIG’s responsibilities under Section 1001. This report — the fifth since enactment of the legislation — summarizes the OIG’s Section 1001-related activities from December 16, 2003, through June 21, 2004.

One of the OIG’s responsibilities is to make sure that suspected terrorists are aware of their rights under the United States Constitution. The agency is required to provide materials and services publicizing the rights of suspects, including those in the prison system.

The report supplies the details of their advertising efforts:
– – – – – – – – – –

A. Internet

The OIG’s website contains information about how individuals can report violations of their civil rights or civil liberties. On our website, the OIG also continues to promote an e-mail address — inspector.general@usdoj.gov — where individuals can send complaints of civil rights and civil liberties violations. During this reporting period, the OIG received most of the 1,613 complaints via e-mail.

The OIG previously developed a poster, translated in Arabic, that explains how to file a civil rights or civil liberties complaint with the OIG. An electronic version of this poster is also available on our website.

The DOJ’s main Internet homepage contains a link that provides a variety of options for reporting civil rights and civil liberties violations to the OIG. The Civil Rights Division’s website also describes the OIG’s role in investigating allegations of misconduct by DOJ employees and provides information on how to file a complaint with the OIG.

In addition, several minority and ethnic organizations have added information to their websites about how to contact the OIG with civil rights and civil liberties complaints. For example, the Arab American Institute (www.aaiusa.org), an organization that represents Arab Americans’ interests and provides community services, added the OIG’s Section 1001 poster to its website of information and resources for the Arab American community. The Institute also has informed its members and affiliates of the OIG’s Section 1001 responsibilities through its weekly e-mail newsletter. Similarly, the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC), one of the largest Arab American organizations in the nation, has posted the OIG’s contact information and Section 1001 responsibilities on its website, which at one time averaged more than 1 million hits per month. The ADC also has published the OIG’s Section 1001 responsibilities in its magazine, the ADC Times, which is circulated to more than 20,000 people. Furthermore, the OIG’s Arabic poster and Section 1001 responsibilities have been disseminated electronically by the Council on American Islamic Relations LISTERV and the National Association of Muslim Lawyers LISTSERV.

B. Television

In the prior reporting period, the OIG arranged to have the following television advertisement aired with the text spoken in Arabic and scrolled in English:

The Office of the Inspector General investigates allegations of civil rights and civil liberties abuses by U.S. Department of Justice employees. If you believe a Department of Justice employee has violated your civil rights or civil liberties, contact the Inspector General at 800-869-4499. That number again is 800-869-4499.

The OIG purchased blocks of time on ANA Television Network, Inc., an Arab cable television station with outlets around the country. According to the promotional materials, ANA Television Network is the largest Arab-American television network in the country and broadcasts news and entertainment 24 hours a day. The segment aired 48 times during prime time in June and July 2003.

C. Radio

Also in the prior reporting period, the OIG submitted public service announcements to 45 radio stations in cities across the country, including New York, Los Angeles, Sacramento, Chicago, Detroit, Houston, Dallas, and Washington, D.C. The text of the PSA read:

The Office of the Inspector General investigates allegations of civil rights and civil liberties abuses by U.S. Department of Justice employees. If you believe a Department of Justice employee has violated your civil rights or civil liberties, contact the Inspector General at 800-869-4499.

Last year, we also purchased airtime for 44 radio advertisements on Arab/Muslim American radio stations in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Detroit, and Dallas. These advertisements, which ran in late 2003, were 60 seconds long and included the same script listed above both in English and Arabic.

D. Posters

Previously, the OIG disseminated approximately 2,500 Section 1001 posters to more than 150 organizations in 50 cities. The posters, in English and Arabic, explain how to contact the OIG to report civil rights and civil liberties abuses.

In an earlier reporting period, we also provided the posters to the BOP, which placed at least two in each of its facilities. We have received hundreds of complaints each reporting period from inmates alleging civil rights and civil liberties abuses, many of which we believe were sent to us in response to the posters.

E. Newspapers

During this reporting period, the OIG purchased additional newspaper advertisements highlighting its role in investigating allegations of civil rights and civil liberties abuses. The display advertisement was placed in an Arab community newspaper and appeared both in English and Arabic.

F. Flyers

Flyers have been translated into several commonly spoken languages in the Muslim world, including Arabic, Urdu, Punjabi, and Vietnamese. The OIG intends to provide these flyers and a forthcoming flyer translated into Indonesian to the BOP with a request that they be made available to incoming inmates in their native languages.

To conclude, ladies and gentlemen, here are your tax dollars at work:

During this reporting period, the OIG spent approximately $322,800 in personnel costs, $19,762 in travel costs (for investigators to conduct interviews), and $2,105 in advertising and publication costs, for a total of more than $344,668 to implement its responsibilities under Section 1001. The personnel and travel costs reflect the time and funds spent by OIG Special Agents, inspectors, and attorneys who have worked directly on investigating Section 1001-related complaints and on conducting special reviews.

These figures are for the first half of 2004. I’m sure that the OIG’s budget has increased in the last two years, and by now it must be spending over a million dollars a year inviting prisoners and suspects to game the system.

The OIG seem to be very proud of the “1,613 complaints [received] via e-mail”. As well they should be — the numbers prove they’ve been doing their job, right?

But think of the additional costs this operation has imposed: all those complaints inspired by the OIG’s advertising had to be acted on. Lawyers with the DOJ had to file motions, investigators had to be dispatched to investigate, corrections officers had to be taken away from their normal duties to be questioned, and mountains of official paperwork had to filed, encoded, digitized, copied, and distributed. There’s no way to quantify the extra expense incurred by all this folderol, but I have no doubt that it’s substantial.

*   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *

Before I go any further, I’ll say this: I’m a racist. I know I’m a racist. I’m an incorrigible, slope-headed, beetle-browed, knuckle-dragging, paleolithic racist. Everything I say below will show this, so don’t bother emailing me.

Now: why are we distributing flyers to terrorists that inform them of their constitutional rights — in Arabic? Why put up posters in Urdu helping them to file complaints?

And why are we working with CAIR, an organization with well-documented connections to Islamist terror groups?

Don’t get me wrong; I’m in favor of everyone having constitutional rights, even suspected or convicted terrorists. But why bend over backwards to invite them to pull the wool over our eyes? Why issue invitations for taqiyya?

We already know, based on captured Al Qaeda materials, that Islamist terrorists are trained to game our legal system and our courts, not to mention the media and the academy. They are taught how to find the vulnerable points in an open and tolerant and society, and then exploit them. Why on earth are we putting up neon signs telling them how to do it?

If the suspect in question is an American citizen, why can’t he read about his rights in English? I don’t think he learned about the First Amendment in an Arabic-language civics class in high school. Why does he need Arabic now?

If he’s not an American citizen, he does not have rights as enumerated in the U.S. Constitution, and he doesn’t need to hear about them in Urdu. His rights are simple and straightforward: to be treated humanely, to be fed and clothed at government expense, to be granted due process in an immigration court, and then (hopefully) to be deported.

Am I overreacting, or does all of this sound like mass insanity?

Update: Commenter Kaptaan has this to say:

Baron, the poster you displayed in the post that has the English version on the right side is written in Punjabi using a Gurmukhi script which is used in the Punjab of India NOT Pakistan. This is probably for the safety and for the benefit of Sikhs who are MISTAKEN in the USA as muslims, not for muslims themselves. For more information on who the Sikhs are you can visit www.sikhs.org or google various sites on the web.

Kaptaan is quite right; Sikhs are often mistaken for Muslims, when they are in fact at least as opposed to Islam as any of us in the West.

That doesn’t detract from my main point. There would be very few non-Muslim Arabic speakers who would need the Arabic posters. And Urdu (which the text lists as one of the languages used by OIG) is spoken by Muslims in Pakistan and India.

Nevertheless, everyone should learn to recognize the Sikh turban (as my ever-helpful readers have taught me to do) so that they don’t “profile” the wrong guy.

Hat tip: Mark R.

Wretchard has put up a couple of posts about the internet filtering system at the Department of the Interior. He now has his own mole at DOI, one who confirms what happened last week, but asserts a different reason for it:

What apparently happened was that the DOI had embarked on a program of blocking access to sites the management deemed objectionable; due to the phases in implementation the effort began with some well known conservative sites but eventually included the liberal blogsites as the program rolled forward.

That sounds plausible. Even if it really happened the way I have suggested, this version gives the folks at Interior a nice cover story, one that will help them save a little face.
– – – – – – – – – –
According to Wretchard’s informant, DOI’s filtering system — surprise, surprise — has finally gotten around to blocking Daily Kos. The list of forbidden fruit includes “porn, bikinis, alcohol, tobacco, racism and extremism, malignant software, narcotics, comics and cartoons, dating services, chat rooms, remote access software (gotomypc.com), peer to peer networks, online gambling, streaming audio and video, instant messaging, and, yes, web logs.”

What else is there on the internet?

I’ve asked Penpal, my own informant at Interior, to check and see what’s being blocked now. She says she’s going to be thorough about it, and may have something to report on Thursday.

So stay tuned.

Note: the new DOI seal shown above is by Lumberjack. Please credit him, and not me, if you borrow it

This email just came in from Kepiblanc, our frequent reader, commenter, translator, and all-around Viking:

In our little fiefdom over here we have a weird tradition: children have piggybanks, sometimes with their names on them. Usually one can buy them in toy stores with the most common Danish names already painted on them, such as Mikkel (Michael), Lucas, Peter, etc…

And now this : (see attached photo — courtesy of the blog Polemiken).

– – – – – – – – – –
Oh-oh. Does this mean more riots in Denmark?

I’m going wee-wee-wee all the way home…

Update: Kimpolina from Polemiken writes in the comments:

It was MY daughter who noticed and photographed the funny pig for little Mohammed.

She took the picture with her mobile phone, and mailed it to me.

I laughed the whole evening. 🙂

…A lot of my friends know me and my blog — www.polemiken.net — quite well, and were difficult to explain to, that I did NOT manipulate the photo in photoshop.

It IS for real.

She invites readers to Polemiken to look at all the images that are photoshopped. I’ve been there, and can vouch for their inventiveness and hilarity, two characteristics at which the Danes excel.

Pajamas Media has posted my big investigative report into the selective blocking of conservative blogs at the Department of the Interior.

I’ll let the cat out of the bag just a little bit by saying that the issue is not selective blocking of blogs, it’s the selective unblocking of blogs.

A snip:

A grand conspiracy at the top of DOI is unlikely. If they wanted to screen out conservative content — say, in order to keep their employees from learning about the Harry Reid caper — they could block all blogs, just as the other federal agencies are doing.

On the other hand… the higher-ups in the Department of the Interior are not getting good information from their subordinates.

Go and read the rest. Make sure to leave a comment!

Update: Danny Glover from National Journal has written on this topic at his blog, and also has a fuller explanation about the issue from Frank Quimby at Interior here.

A reader responded to “The Shape of Things to Come in Europe“ with this note:

The Front National should not be listed among the resistance. Le Pen is more concerned with hating Jews than preserving France. [Link]

(Galliawatch reported on this months ago)

Le Pen’s party can certainly be described as “nationalistic”. But I agree with the reader — Jew-hating nationalism is unlikely to be helpful in the coming struggle.

In fact, many of the most virulent neo-Nazi groups are likely to switch sides and join up with the imams. This has already happened with at least one group in Britain.

If you mention the name “Al Stewart” to someone, if he recognizes the name at all, he’ll say, “Oh, yeah— isn’t he that pop singer from the ‘70s, the one who sang ‘Year of the Cat.’?”

Al Stewart is indeed that singer, but there’s a lot more to Al Stewart than “Year of the Cat” and “Time Passages.” He has an unsurpassed body of work, and is still composing and performing excellent songs.

Stewart’s music is intricate and sophisticated, but his lyrics have always been what capture my attention. I consider him the greatest living lyricist writing in English. To top it all off, he’s a history buff, and many of his songs delve into historical themes with an eloquent attention to detail. He has released two albums, Past, Present, and Future (1974) and Between the Wars (1995), which are devoted entirely to historical themes.

We have occasionally alluded to and quoted from Al Stewart lyrics here at Gates of Vienna, but it’s time to feature an entire song. This is one of his finest: from Past, Present, and Future, it tells the story of the Second World War from the point of view of a low-ranking Soviet soldier.

The music is just as good as the lyrics; I recommend buying the CD. Various other songs on the album feature Warren Harding, Ernst Röhm, and Admiral Fisher.
– – – – – – – – – –
Roads to Moscow
by Al Stewart

They crossed over the border the hour before dawn
Moving in lines through the day
Most of our planes were destroyed on the ground where they lay
Waiting for orders we held in the wood — word from the front never came
By evening the sound of the gunfire was miles away
Ah, softly we move through the shadows, slip away through the trees
Crossing their lines in the mists in the fields on our hands and our knees
And all that I ever was able to see
The fire in the air glowing red silhouetting the smoke on the breeze

All summer they drove us back through the Ukraine
Smolyensk and Viyasma soon fell
By autumn we stood with our backs to the town of Orel
Closer and closer to Moscow they come — riding the wind like a bell
General Guderian stands at the crest of the hill
Winter brought with her the rains, oceans of mud filled the roads
Gluing the tracks of their tanks to the ground while the sky filled with snow
And all that I ever was able to see
The fire in the air glowing red silhouetting the snow on the breeze

In the footsteps of Napoleon the shadow figures stagger through the winter
Falling back before the gates of Moscow,
Standing in the wings like an avenger
And far away behind their lines the partisans are stirring in the forest
Coming unexpectedly upon their outposts, growing like a promise
You’ll never know, you’ll never know
Which way to turn, which way to look, you’ll never see us
As we’re stealing through the blackness of the night
You’ll never know, you’ll never hear us
And the evening sings in a voice of amber, the dawn is surely coming
The morning road leads to Stalingrad, and the sky is softly humming

Two broken Tigers on fire in the night flicker their souls to the wind
We wait in the lines for the final approach to begin
It’s been almost four years that I’ve carried a gun
At home it’ll almost be spring
The flames of the Tigers are lighting the road to Berlin
Ah, quickly we move through the ruins that bow to the ground
The old men and children they send out to face us, they can’t slow us down
And all that I ever was able to see
The eyes of the city are opening now, it’s the end of the dream

I’m coming home, I’m coming home
Now you can taste it in the wind, the war is over
And I listen to the clicking of the train wheels as we roll across the border
And now they ask me of the time
That I was caught behind their lines and taken prisoner
“They only held me for a day, a lucky break”, I say;
They turn and listen closer
I’ll never know, I’ll never know
Why I was taken from the line and all the others
To board a special train and journey deep into the heart of Holy Russia
And it’s cold and damp in the transit camp, and the air is still and sullen
And the pale sun of October whispers the snow will soon be coming
And I wonder when I’ll be home again and the morning answers, “Never”
And the evening sighs and the steely Russian skies go on forever

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The image at the top of this post is the official photograph of the raising of the Red Flag over the Reichstag on May 2, 1945 after the Russians entered Berlin. But this photo was staged; the flag was actually first hoisted atop the Reichstag on April 30th. The original was knocked off by a German shell at some point; the flag was raised again on May 1, and then the final, official version was created for the photographer the next day.

But even that illustrious publicity stunt had at least two versions. One version, featured below, was deemed unsuitable for official propaganda because expensive plundered wristwatches are clearly visible on the wrists of the soldiers. In fact, if you look carefully, you’ll notice that the soldier helping to steady the man holding the flag actually has two watches, one on each wrist.

The photo finally chosen to be the icon of the Soviet victory was carefully airbrushed and lacking in wristwatches.

All this is a reminder that fauxtography was an established institution more than sixty years before the phrase “reutered photograph” was coined, and the Soviets were the undisputed masters of the art. The group photo of the Old Bolsheviks stands as an exemplar of the genre, with all the old cronies airbrushed out one by one as they were liquidated, leaving nothing but Lenin and Stalin — and all those mysteriously blank stretches of wallpaper in the background — looking into the camera.

Fjordman,

You have said that the countries of Western Europe are facing a civil war in the near future, fueled by the large mass of unassimilated immigrant Muslims which politically correct orthodoxy has allowed to accumulate.

I agree.

You have said that we are probably seeing the first skirmishes of this war in the riots that have recently broken out in Brussels, Gothenburg, Windsor, and the banlieux of Paris. You see these as the beginning of what might be called the Multicultural World War.

I agree.

But, now that the war is starting, how will it unfold? Assuming that the native inhabitants of Europe do not simply lie down in the streets like good dhimmis and let the legions of the Prophet trample over them, what will come next?

Here are some meditations about the future of Europe.
– – – – – – – – – –
First of all, the will of Europe’s people will eventually be heard. In virtually every European country, public opinion is shaped, suppressed, guided, and stifled by government control of the media and the absence of laws which would permit truly free speech. A huge behemoth of bureaucratic inertia has metastasized into the European Union, and will continue this suppression in order to hold onto the levers of power and the trappings of privilege for as long as possible.

But popular discontent can only be held in check for so long, and will be all the more vigorous when it finally bursts forth. This will occur as more and more working-class neighborhoods succumb to the lawlessness of immigrant gangs acting violently and with impunity. Then people will want a change in public policy. As the violence and disorder spread to middle class neighborhoods, or even to the gated redoubts of the élites, electoral pressure for change will become inexorable.

This process is beginning already, as the recent election in Sweden shows. The parties that have up until now been marginalized by these élites as “right-wing extremists” — the British National Party, the Vlaams Belang in Belgium, the Dansk Folkeparti, and the Front National in France, for example — have grown increasingly popular in recent months, despite the opprobrium of the cognoscenti.

Eventually, when the situation gets bad enough, one or more of these “extremist” parties will gain power, either through an outright majority or through a majority within a center-right coalition. At that point the nationalist party gains the right to appoint its members to the key Defense and Interior Ministries (or their equivalents within a particular country).

Then comes a fork in the road.

In a normal, well-functioning democracy, the people’s will would in due course be carried out through its elected representatives. The ministers would give the orders, the functionaries in the ministries would obey, and the country would take action to defend itself and avert the rapidly looming catastrophe.

But are the European countries well-functioning democracies? Will the entrenched élites — all those with a vested interest in continuing the status quo of the existing Eurabian system — go gentle into that good night? Or will the members of the permanent bureaucracy, the media, and the upper levels of the academy fight tooth and nail to maintain their Multicultural hegemony?

The USA has a much milder case of the same deadly disease, but my experience here gives me little cause for hope about Europe. The media will mobilize to demonize, discredit, and delegitimize the new ruling government. The propaganda in the schools and universities promoting the Multicultural ideal will increase to a level that Göbbels would admire. The members of the bureaucracy, firmly adherent to the old system, will drum up scandal, release damaging information selectively, drag their feet when carrying out the new policies, and in general do whatever they possibly can to thwart the will of the newly-elected leaders.

In effect, there will be a cultural civil war. To suppress the renascent nationalists, the adherents of the existing power structure will mobilize any available assets, including their immigrant allies.

However, the will of the people can never be suppressed indefinitely. It will prevail. If it cannot proceed through the legitimate pathways of a democratic state, it will go around them. In effect, the rule of law will be suspended.

Once that happens, things will get ugly, with no guarantee of public order or the security of civil society.

We all hope this doesn’t happen. We hope that those in the entrenched ruling class will place the interests of their people above their own hold on power. But history holds out scant reason for optimism in such situations.

Europe can wake up now, or it will be jolted out of its slumber later by a knock on the door. Waiting on the other side is an armed man in a uniform, a man of firm purpose, having no qualms and no scruples. He is ready to act at a moment’s notice, and with absolute ruthlessness.