The Lumpen Electorate

Posted on November 24, 2006 by Baron Bodissey

Well, it’s been two weeks, now, and I can finally write about the election.

Despair I’ve passed through all the typical emotional stages of reaction to tragedy — shocked disbelief, denial, numbness, escape, and — finally — bitter determination.

It’s not as though the election made that much of a difference. We’re only a millimeter away from where we were on November 6th, but we passed through a membrane in order to get here. The damage had long been done, but now we have to acknowledge it.

There’s plenty of blame to go around, whether it’s Rumsfeld, the State Department, the craven and profligate Congress, or the President’s open-borders-and-amnesty immigration policy.

Above all, there are the mainstream media, the traitorous lackeys of the Left who have gone over to the enemy. With the media doing the heavy lifting for the mujahideen, the Republicans had no chance, even if they had somehow managed to grow brains and a spine in time for the election.

The shape of things to come is becoming clear. Syria — which means Iran — has moved openly in Lebanon, with the mullahs in Tehran ready to proclaim victory. Sensing the imminent American pullout, the terrorists in Iraq are ramping up the violence, knowing that with just a little more carnage the Democratic Congress will be ready to cut the funding for the war and abandon the Iraqis to their fate. The specialists at Reuters are probably even now photoshopping the last helicopter lifting off from the roof of the American embassy in Baghdad.

It doesn’t mean that we won’t fight this war, or that we will lose it (although we might). It means that we will fight it later, closer to home, and with many more casualties than we would otherwise have had to take. It means that right about the same time that the Supreme Court forces the states to institute homosexual marriage, parts of Dearborn will be instituting Shari’a. It means that right about the same time that amnesty is declared for all the Mexicans illegally in this country, agents of Al Qaeda infiltrated across the southern border will be detonating a weapon of mass destruction in a major city of the United States.
– – – – – – – – – –
The power of the legacy media is immense, despite their declining stock prices and number of viewers. The blogosphere and other alternative media are expanding, and they represent the future. But politicians don’t pay much attention to the blogs; they still take their cues from The New York Times. It is fear of the major newspapers and the networks which has driven the Republicans to take such cowardly positions on nearly every issue. Even their responses to the immigration problem, which polled so clearly in favor of strict enforcement, were late and lame.

When you read that John Boehner, the new House minority leader, gets his information from “the newspapers”, you know the depth of trouble that we are in. The people who brought you Mohammed al-Dura, the “genocide” of Jenin, and the massacred babies of Qana — those are the same people who are informing the opposition party in the United States Congress.

Weep for America.

And with the giants of the Republican Party leading, can the average American be far behind?

We, the readers of Gates of Vienna, and other members of the VRWC live in a rarefied atmosphere. We’re relatively well-informed, and vacuum up information wherever it can be found, not relying on news filters and conventional sources.

But most Americans don’t pay much attention. They have only the most superficial grasp of political issues, yet many of them vote. When they pick up any political information at all, it is from the soundbites on the network news, or from the headlines in the national dailies. And in the last two decades these organs of the Fourth Estate have gone from being biased towards the liberal to being outspoken shills for the Democrat party. The simple truth is that, due to the uniform partisanship of the media, it has become politically impossible for a Republican administration to prosecute a war successfully. We will have Vietnam, and then Vietnam, and then more Vietnam, over and over again, until the electorate gets the message and votes the Democrats back into power.

I have seen this process at work with a couple of my close relatives. These people aren’t stupid, and they aren’t even ignorant of most things. But they don’t pay any attention to political matters in any depth. It doesn’t mean that I always disagree with them — since they are regular working folks and not members of the runny-brie-and-dry-Chablis élite, they often have reliable instincts that run against the prevailing politically correct wisdom.

But when they talk about current political issues, their positions are almost word-for-word from the headlines in the Washington Post or the soundbites from the evening news. You can hear them say “Bush is a moron” or “Republicans only care about rich people” without any idea of whose party line they are parroting or where they picked it up. And when election day rolls around, they troop on down to the firehouse and do their civic duty.

It’s a reasonable assumption that there are millions more like them all across the country, and that’s how the same people could vote for Bush two years ago and yet make Nancy Pelosi speaker of the House this year.

Eventually the decline of the legacy media will become so severe, and the alternative media so widespread, that ordinary people and politicians will be collecting their information from different sources. But that process will take at least another decade, by which time it will be too late to keep us out of the worst of the struggle against the Great Islamic Jihad.

It’s going to be a lengthy war, and a messy one. Gird your loins and settle in for the long haul.

The USA is the Biggest Threat

Posted on November 24, 2006 by Baron Bodissey

Swedish reader XY has provided us with this translation of an Oct. 29th article in Svenska Dagbladet:

The USA and North Korea are the two biggest threats against world peace. That’s the opinion of Swedes, according to a survey by Temo.

Almost one in three Swedes, 29 percent, thinks that the USA is the biggest threat to world peace, according to a survey by Temo, as commissioned by the TV-channel Axess Television, says Dagens Nyheter [Today’s News].

More than 1000 people were posed the question “Which one of the following countries do you think is the greatest threat to world peace?” There were six alternatives: Israel, China, Russia, USA, North Korea and Iran.

North Korea was close to sharing the top spot with the USA — 28 percent of those asked thought that this country was the most dangerous. In the third spot came Iran with 18 percent of the votes.

– – – – – – – – – –

The survey also shows that it is the younger people — those between 16 and 29 — that see the USA as the biggest threat, whereas a majority of the eldest — those over 60 — thinks that North Korea is most dangerous.

Political opinions are related to the result. 68 percent of those that voted for vänsterpartiet [the Leftist Party] and 57 percent of the voters of miljöpartiet [the Green Party] that the USA is most dangerous. Only 20 percent of the m- and kd-voters [center/right parties] shared that opinion.

It’s notable that these opinions are more prevalent among Swedish youth, indicating that the suffocating blanket of media propaganda has had an effect on the impressionable young.

Or… Maybe we are the greatest danger to world peace. Maybe we should just realize the error of our ways, bring all our boys home, and leave Europe and the rest of the world to fend for itself.

I’m sure the Swedes would be eternally grateful if we did.

“This is something one is not allowed to speak of.”

Posted on November 23, 2006 by Baron Bodissey

The Swedish newspaper Folkets Nyheter has published a followup (in English) to its interview with the Malmö policeman that we featured here a few days ago.

I don’t want to hear complaints about the nature of Folkets Nyheter, or its association with neo-Nazi or other hate groups. The important thing is the information about Malmö in the interview, and whether or not it is true.

Here’s what the newspaper has to say in its defense:

A commentary from Folkets Nyheter’s editorial staff on the interview with a Malmö police man

On account of all the attention caused by the publishing of Folkets Nyheter’s article Malmöpolisens klarspråk: Det är på väg att gå åt helvete! (in English: Plain Speech From the Malmö Police: It’s all going to hell!), Folkets Nyheter would like to make some clarifications and take the opportunity to say thank you, for all the e-mails we have received and to those of our readers who on their own initiative have translated and spread the interview around the world.

This is one of the most important interviews Folkets Nyheter has made and we owe much gratitude to the very courageous policeman who dared to tell us and our readers about his experiences from and about the true reality of Malmö, Sweden’s third largest city.

Due to the state of suppression of free opinion and the lack of practical freedom of speech presently in Sweden in matters of the highest importance to our people and country, we can not disclose any further information on the identity of the policeman we have interviewed.

– – – – – – – – – –

Naturally, we understand that people are curious about his identity but we guarantee absolute anonymity to those who we interview and hope to interview in the future about similar topics. There is, as many immigrant youth have picked up on and are participating in wholeheartedly, a sort of war waged against the Swedish people and for a policeman to let himself be interviewed about the matter is not without its dangers.

The interview with the policeman is authentic, evidently. Folkets Nyheter has, which you can see if you read articles published on our web site and in our paper issue, made a large number of interviews: with other policemen from Malmö whose only advice to Swedish youth that are attacked by immigrant gangs is to “Run like hell away from there!”; with government authorities like the Ombudsman Against Ethnic Discrimination who are of the opinion that Swedes, who do not want to spend an evening out in places they find are to frequented by immigrants, should stay at home…

With news papers like Kristianstadsbladet who expose people who are critical of current immigration policies with names and home addresses and in their news articles magically transform left wing extremists into “Nazis”. With a seventeen year old Swedish girl who was harassed and beaten by an immigrant mob in Ronna and when rescued by her father and the police, was shot at by the mob with automatic weapons. With a 20-year old who was stabbed in the back by an immigrant gang in Helsingborg and escaped death by a mere 2 millimetres. With a police officer in Stockholm who confirmed that the majority of perpetrators behind the rape epidemic that has struck Stockholm are black Africans and also commented: “But this is something one is not allowed to speak of”.

This is just a fraction of what Folkets Nyheter and other alternative Swedish news sources have reported on. Claiming, like certain debaters have done in different forums around the world where our article is being discussed, that our interview is a fraud and that the policeman himself does not exist is politically corrects’ wishful thinking and to cowardly turn away from the reality taking place in Malmö and Sweden.

Considering all of the attention and stir caused by just one interview like this, we are hoping this will give others the strength and courage to get in touch with Folkets Nyheter or other media who are working outside of the establishment. An establishment with a massive hostility towards ethnic Swedes and hell bent on distorting reality.

The established mass media of Sweden have deserted the Swedish people long ago, and so has our political leadership. It is now up to us who have realized and acknowledged this, to build a structure that will be able to circumvent and in time replace the current establishment with something better.

If any readers find factual inaccuracies in all this, or errors of deduction, or biased presentation, or any other fault in the information itself, please go ahead and argue your case. But don’t argue by discrediting the source; I don’t consider that valid. As I said the other day, the PC-Multicultural establishment in Sweden has forced all dissenting opinion into the same bed as the neo-Nazis and Nordic nationalists.

I don’t care. If this information is true, it’s worth looking at.

Let’s pretend that Folkets Nyheter is being run by a consortium that includes Jack the Ripper, Heinrich Himmler, and Attila the Hun. There. Now we know they’re Real Bad Guys.

Let’s drop that argument and look at what’s being said.

Hat tip: Steen of Snaphanen.

Human Rights Watch Says “Poor Saddam”

Posted on November 22, 2006 by Baron Bodissey

The Human Rights Watch has issued a report on the recent trial of ~~Josef Stalin~~ Saddam Hussein.

Predictably, HRW is distressed at the unfair trial of the monster. Let me state my concerns at the get-go: the biggest mistake in this trial was its very existence. Hussein should have been summarily executed right in the hidey-hole where he was discovered.

And just to make sure it was “fair,” an Iraqi volunteer should have had the honor. A call for one would’ve produced thousands, if not millions of grieving citizens willing to pull the trigger, toss in the gas, and seal over the hole with rocks – whatever it took for a “fair” and just response to this monster’s crimes.

Putting him in a court docket wasn’t fair, it was a disgusting waste of lives, time, and money. Saddam Hussein had long since crossed the line where justice is called for in the decades prior to American boots landing in his bloodied and bowed country. He is evil on a world scale; much the same as his hero, Stalin – though he didn’t have the same amount of human resources to degrade.

Evidence Enough And Human Rights Watch’s fisking of the trial proceedings is not only unjust, it’s trivial. If there was to be a trial in the first place, a good prosecution would simply to have put up pictures, frame by frame, of all those he tortured, gassed, massacred, raped, etc. They could have shown the personal video tape collection Saddam himself kept of these killings so he could play them back for his own entertainment.

– – – – – – – – – –
No words need have been spoken. The pictures would have been enough. Given the sheer numbers of people he killed, it would have taken several months to show all his victims. Then, the just, merciful thing to do would have been to shoot him where he sat.

And while we’re on the subject of self-righteous watchdogs, where are the greenies? Why haven’t they come forth at this trial to complain about Saddam’s ruining of the wetlands in the north? It was a project he undertook to drive out the Kurds, but what about the senseless harm he brought to vast numbers of wildlife?

And where are the women’s groups? Why weren’t they at the trial to protest Saddam’s treatment of women, who could be – and were – grabbed off the streets for his evening’s entertainment?

Instead, the report complains about things like the frequent changes of judges (it never mentions the constant threats the judges were subjected to by Saddam’s cohorts), it complains about the demeanor of the judges toward the defendants. Here’s one exchange HRW shows as proof of poor judicial deportment:

On June 12, 2006, the judge entered into an exchange of insults with defendant Barzan al-Tikriti before ordering the latter’s removal from the chamber. Al-Tikriti had complained that witnesses for him were scared to come forward to testify:

Judge: Afraid of Whom? Ghosts?

Al-Tikriti: Afraid of the terrifying court.

Judge: You’re terrifying!

Al-Tikriti: No, you’re terrifying!

Judge: Why do you always have to be the hero? Get him out of here.

The injustice! The unfairness! The disgrace!

Two questions:

why was there a trial at all? This is war and we are in the middle of it. Saddam was/is the enemy, deserving summary execution, not a judicial proceeding.
Why didn’t Saddam take Hitler’s way out? The “Hitler-as-ultimate-evil” shark has truly been jumped when something he did compares favorably to Saddam’s craven behavior.

The Human Rights Watch report on Saddam’s trial is a sick joke. It is simply one more proof that Western civilization is hell-bent on a suicide mission. These people are but one contingent of the Kamikaze Kids, carrying on in behalf of Saint Karl Marx.

I’m sure you could name a dozen other groups, all intelligent but woefully – and especially willfully – ignorant of the malignant evil of those they propose to protect. Such groups actually serve to increase the evil present on this planet, and they do so in the name of Justice.

I’m sure that lady has long since removed her blindfold by now. She is sitting in the gutter, sobbing into her handkerchief. Who needs a blindfold when groups such as these seek to poke your eyes out and make a mockery of your name?

The time cannot come too soon when we will be able to speak of this evil man in the past tense.

Swedes Have Nannies, Too

Posted on November 21, 2006 by Baron Bodissey

Nanny Even though Swedes pay more than half of their income to the government in taxes, they are still wealthy enough to hire nannies. At least government ministers are, provided they pay their employees under the table to avoid the payroll taxes.

Check out this Bloomberg story:

Illegal nannies are shaking up Sweden’s ideal of social equality.

Two ministers in Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt’s newly installed government quit last month after saying they had hired nannies and cleaners under the table to avoid payroll taxes. The scandal came as Reinfeldt prepared to cut taxes employers pay on the wages of household help, making such workers more affordable.

– – – – – – – – – –

The controversy highlights tensions between an increasingly affluent population that can afford domestic help and Social Democratic traditions that reject the use of servants. Opponents say Reinfeldt’s proposal will boost the use of cleaners and nannies, eroding a culture in which even the wealthy were expected to do their own housework.

“The tax deduction has a great symbolic charge,” said Ulf Bjereld, a professor of political science at Gothenburg University. “For the left, it’s seen as a return to 19th-century values, where maids deal with the household labor so that the upper classes can live well.”

About one in five Swedes hires household help without paying employer’s fees, according to the Swedish tax authority. It costs three times as much to employ a cleaner legally as on the black market. If the cost fell, 24 percent would hire workers legally, according to an October survey by researcher Sifo for the newspaper Svenska Dagbladet. The paper didn’t say what percentage of Swedes currently hires workers legally.

The government, led by Reinfeldt’s Moderate Party, on Oct. 16 said it would cut income taxes by 38.7 billion kronor ($5.5 billion) and introduce tax deductions for people who hire cleaners and nannies.

If I understand this initiative correctly, the proper translation would be, “Since we got caught in the act, we’ll cut your taxes and subsidize the servant industry, so you, too, can afford to hire a Third World nanny.”

But here’s a part I don’t understand:

“Employment would increase and black-market jobs would partly be replaced by white jobs,” the government said in a statement. “There’s a great potential for employment opportunities within household-related services.” [emphasis added]

I hope “white” means “legal” in this case…

Therese, a 32-year-old public-relations consultant from Stockholm, said she supported Reinfeldt’s proposal. She currently pays the equivalent of $15.50 an hour to a Polish worker who cleans her apartment every other week.

“The price difference to buying a legal service is just too big,” Therese said, declining to give her full name because she is evading the tax.

Domestic workers, too, say they support the plan. When employers don’t pay social-security taxes, workers aren’t entitled to government-sponsored benefits and have to save for retirement through private programs. Imelda, a 48-year-old Filipina cleaner and caterer who has lived in Sweden for 26 years, said many clients pay her in cash.

“It’s a lot better for me when they pay taxes,” said Imelda, who declined to give her last name. “I’ve got to think about my future, but I expect things to become a lot better with this proposal.”

High taxes… A demand for cheap labor… A tacit agreement between the ruling class and the peons so that the black market can supply what the distortions of Socialism suppress… What are we, back in the U.S.S.R.?

No word if that Filipina maid is a Muslim, although her name makes it unlikely. Nothing about how many Muslims are domestic workers caring for the children of the upper class. Sweden has an awful lot of Muslim immigrants, though. And, judging by the case of the Colorado slave-owner, the going rate for a Muslim household servant —ten bucks a month, and sexual service for free — may be low enough that Muslim domestics would be a better deal for the frugal Swedish politician than those expensive immigrant Poles.

Council Winners for November 10th

Posted on November 21, 2006 by Baron Bodissey

Watcher’s Council For the week of November 10th, Right Wing Nut House took first place for his essay, Irony so Thick You Can Bathe In It.

In high dudgeon, Rick Moran addresses the temerity and the hollowed out shell of the old Grey Doxy in her recent stance on the release of Saddam material. Here, let him tell you in his inimitable style:

The levels of irony on display with the “revelation” by the New York Times that some of the Saddam documents dealing with Hussein’s drive for nuclear weapons may constitute a dangerous release of classified info on how to build them is so perfect, so exquisitely delightful that it’s at times like these I wish I was a poet.

Only The Bard himself could do justice to the smorgasbord of delectable incongruities, tasty paradoxes, and bitterly sardonic idiocies that the New York Times, the left, our intelligence agencies, and yes – even those of us who pined for the release of this historic treasure trove of data have ultimately fallen into.

The New York Times, a news organ that has on many occasions revealed the existence of some of the most classified intelligence programs the government uses to protect American citizens, in violation of the law, of common sense, and (my own opinion) of their patriotic duty during a time of war, now implicitly criticizes the Bush Administration for (wait for it)…releasing classified information!

Not only can you not make this stuff up, you wouldn’t even want to – the reality of the NYT’s convenient and oh-so-relative morality re the press, classified information, and who has the right to know what is so convoluted and convenient in the moment that one grows annoyed with the tedium of having to watch their posturing.

Buncha moral morons.

On the non-Council side, the Watcher broke a tie for first place between Rants and Raves and The QandO Blog.

The former took first place for The Demand for Perfection. In his opening salvo, he quotes the great Joe Louis. I’d never heard this story before; it’s a good one:

– – – – – – – – – –

During the Second World War, boxer Joe Louis, the “Brown Bomber” served in the US Army as a spokesman, or “propagandist” we’d say today.

Contrary to popular belief today, the 60s generation did not discover racial injustice. Watch old movies on TCM and you’ll see that plenty of people had been bothered by it for some time. Nor did the fact that America was fighting two viciously racist regimes while treating Black people as second class citizens escape everybody’s notice.

The story goes that at some point in Joe Louis’ army career, a journalist asked him how he felt about serving in a segregated army, fighting for a country that treated him as second class. He replied, “America ain’t got no problems Hitler can solve.”

Precisely. Now why isn’t the Pentagon using our patriot entertainers and athletes to tell the story of America in Iraq? How come they’ve left it to al Jazeera to pick up the ball and run with it? I swear, once you get past colonel, the pin so many stars on your brain that thinking becomes paralyzed, and original thinking is not in the job description. Especially for the desk commandos.

The other first place essay was Discussing the Developing Role of the Media During Times of War is an analysis of James Q. Wilson’s article today “The Press at War”. Here is the money quote from Wilson:

Th[e] change in the media is not a transitory one that will give way to a return to the support of our military when it fights. Journalism, like so much scholarship, now dwells in a postmodern age in which truth is hard to find and statements merely serve someone’s interests.

The mainstream media’s adversarial stance, both here and abroad, means that whenever a foreign enemy challenges us, he will know that his objective will be to win the battle not on some faraway bit of land but among the people who determine what we read and watch. We won the Second World War in Europe and Japan, but we lost in Vietnam and are in danger of losing in Iraq and Lebanon in the newspapers, magazines and television programs we enjoy.

No wonder these two posts tied for first place. Do you see how the first segues into the second? We all know the terrible toll the too-cool-to-tell-the-truth-press has taken on American lives. Wilson simply exposes them a bit further.

As I’ve been saying, until the military gets off its duff in the Information War, we will win nothing. It’s not the mendacious Dems, it’s the damned MSM. Mark my words, though: now that the Dems are running things, the spin on Iraq will switch polarities. We’ll have to wait and see what shows up at the Watcher’s Council in the next year, but my money is on a gradually more positive outlook about foreign policy as played by the new kids in town.

And should the Dems take the Executive Office in 2008, you may even see little American flag lapel pins appearing on the suits as they natter on about how things are changing in the Middle East.It’s almost worth bringing on Hillary and Obama just to watch it happen.

I said almost…

The Watcher’s Place has the rest of us, still hanging in there. Give him a visit. And if being filled with loathing makes you happy (to paraphrase Pogo), be sure to look at the Ed Wonk’s piece on the JROTC in San Francisco.

What You Knew Anyway: Conservatives Are More Generous

Posted on November 21, 2006 by Baron Bodissey

The Surprising Truth There’s a new book out, written by an academic at Syracuse University. Formerly a Democrat voter who morphed eventually into a Republican before becoming an independent (sound familiar?), the author spent a decade crunching numbers to come up with his findings.

Who Really Cares: The Surprising Truth About Compassionate Conservatism is set for a timely release: right after Thanksgiving. According to the Amazon website editorial, Arthur C. Brooks has impeccable academic liberal credentials:

[He] is professor of public administration at Syracuse University’s Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs. He is the author of numerous articles and books on topics relating to charity and civic life, and his work appears frequently in the Wall Street Journal and other publications.

Having established his bona fides, here’s what he says [my boldface]:

… conservatives who practice religion, live in traditional nuclear families and reject the notion that the government should engage in income redistribution are the most generous Americans, by any measure.

Conversely, secular liberals who believe fervently in government entitlement programs give far less to charity. They want everyone’s tax dollars to support charitable causes and are reluctant to write checks to those causes, even when governments don’t provide them with enough money.

Such an attitude, he writes, not only shortchanges the nonprofits but also diminishes the positive fallout of giving, including personal health, wealth and happiness for the donor and overall economic growth.

All of this, he said, he backs up with statistical analysis.

– — – — – — – — – –
Anecdotal experience leads most of us to the same conclusion. Conservative families teach their children from an early age the importance of returning to others out of the abundance that they, as a family, experience. And conservative families don’t tend to see their material wealth as something that is due simply to their own hard work or virtue. Nor do they see their wealth as something that belongs solely to them. With prosperity comes the need for discernment in its distribution, and also the recognition that bread cast upon the waters returns to you in ways you cannot anticipate.

A generous heart really does leave the world a better place.

When our readers were so spontaneously openhanded in our recent appeal for financial help, I was reminded of my own mother’s generosity, even when she had very little to share. I saw her giving returned to her in ways she couldn’t have anticipated.

For example, there was the time she took in a young woman who was pregnant and planning to give her baby up for adoption. The girl, a college student, lived with my mother for more than six months. After the baby was born and had been given to a delighted childless couple, the girl returned to her studies and life went on. For my mother the aftermath was a feeling of emptiness once her guest was gone, sadness for the young woman’s loss, while at the same time she shared the happiness of the new parents. As she said at the time, it left her heart sore.

Mother had known none of the people involved. Someone asked her to help and so she did. She met the parents of the girl a few times when they came to visit their daughter and take her to dinner, but she never saw the adoptive parents since they received the baby at the hospital. But of course the impact of having been part of that experience stayed with her; she never forgot any of them and often wondered how they all fared afterwards.

That was simply one of the things I know about that my mother did, but there were many others.

Many years later, when she was retired and finding it hard to make ends meet, an envelope of cash would arrive in the mail every month. She never knew who sent it, or how they knew about her circumstances, but the money continued for some years and helped her to keep the house repaired and the car running.

Are the two experiences connected? You be the judge. When I pointed out what I saw as their synchronicity, Mother just waved it away. Harboring the young woman was just what one was “supposed to do”; it had no bearing on the generous gift she received every month. But if I had been able to ask her mysterious givers about their decision to supplement my mother’s income, I’m sure they would’ve dismissed my question, too. They were merely doing what we’re all here to do: help one another.

Too bad the government is set up to interfere with that natural process. Too bad that those in control of the purse strings seem to believe that government does it better.

In the introduction to The Surprising Truth…, the author admits:

“These are not the sort of conclusions I ever thought I would reach when I started looking at charitable giving in graduate school, 10 years ago,” he writes in the introduction. “I have to admit I probably would have hated what I have to say in this book.”

Still, he says it forcefully, pointing out that liberals give less than conservatives in every way imaginable, including volunteer hours and donated blood.

Giving liberals bad news is not fun, but Dr. Brooks is prepared for the fallout:

“I know I’m going to get yelled at a lot with this book,” he said. “But when you say something big and new, you’re going to get yelled at.”

Not only will he get yelled at, but other academics will begin picking apart his theses and his conclusions. The old “kill the messenger” mentality — it’s easier to kill him than have to live out the consequences.

Bully for him. It’s nice to know someone is willing to kick out the stool of doctrinal income redistribution as the only solution to economic problems. That’s heresy for some. But if he changes any minds, perhaps those who insist that problems can only be solved by taking more of your money will reconsider their position. Or maybe they won’t. The kind of openhandedness that flows naturally from the sense that we live in abundance can’t arise in a life focused on the day’s dire news.

When you’re waiting for the next MSM-generated catastrophe — whether it be global warming (or the new ice age), oil depletion, the nuclear Armageddon — whatever terrible event surely lurking just around the corner, who has the time, energy, or gratitude left to foster abundance?

For some of us, Thanksgiving is a special day; for others giving thanks is what you do when you get up in the morning.

For further information, here is Dr. Brooks’ website.

Why the Future May Not Belong to Islam

Posted on November 21, 2006 by Baron Bodissey

The noted blogger Fjordman is filing this report via Gates of Vienna.
For a complete Fjordman blogography, see The Fjordman Files. There is also a multi-index listing here.

Canadian writer Mark Steyn thinks “The future belongs to Islam.” The main reason for this, according to him, is demography, with massive population growth in Islamic countries and low birth rates in infidel nations. He makes some assertions I agree with, such as that big government is a national security threat since “it increases your vulnerability to threats like Islamism, and makes it less likely you’ll be able to summon the will to rebuff it.”

According to Steyn, “Four years into the ‘war on terror,’ the Bush administration began promoting a new formulation: ‘the long war.’ Not a good sign. In a short war, put your money on tanks and bombs. In a long war, the better bet is will and manpower.”

Critics would claim that Mr. Steyn isn’t contributing to maintaining Western willpower by suggesting that we’ve already lost. Still, I shouldn’t be too hard on him. The Canadian Council on American-Islamic Relations denounced his article as “Islamophobic, inflammatory and offensive.” If CAIR dislikes you, you know you must be doing something right.

But he makes other assertions I strongly disagree with, such as indicating that the United States should remain in Iraq to spread democracy: “What does it mean when the world’s hyperpower, responsible for 40 percent of the planet’s military spending, decides that it cannot withstand a guerrilla war with historically low casualties against a ragbag of local insurgents and imported terrorists?”

Here, Mark Steyn is wrong, which indicates that he doesn’t fully understand Islam. The entire project of “spreading democracy” was a mistake from the very beginning, because democracy cannot be exported to an Islamic country such as Iraq. It is stupidity to waste hundreds of billions of dollars on Muslims while Islamization continues apace in the West.

Steyn also does not fully understand the issue of demography. Islamic countries are parasitical. Even the massive population growth is only an advantage as long as Muslims are allowed to export it to infidel lands. Deprived of this opportunity, and of Western aid, the Islamic world would quickly sink into a quagmire of overpopulation. This is a long-term solution, to demonstrate to Muslims the failure of Islam.
– – – – – – – – – –
According to Srdja Trifkovic, the author of Defeating Jihad, “The tangible cost of the presence of a Muslim man, woman and child to the American taxpayer is at least $100,000 each year. The cost of the general unpleasantness associated with the terrorist threat and its impact on the quality of our lives is, of course, incalculable. (…) There is a direct, empirically verifiable correlation between the percentage of Muslims in a country and the increase of terrorist violence in that country (not to mention the general decline in the quality of life and civilized discourse).”

Sooner or later, we have to deal with the implications of this fact. The best way to deal with the Islamic world is to have as little to do with it as possible. We should completely stop Muslim immigration. This could be done in indirect ways, such as banning immigration from nations known to be engaged in terrorism. All Muslim non-citizens in the West should be removed. We should also change our laws to ensure that Muslim citizens who advocate sharia, preach Jihad, the inequality of “infidels” etc should have their citizenship revoked and be deported back to their country of origin.

We need to create an environment where the practice of Islam is made difficult. Muslim citizens should be forced to accept our secular ways or leave if they desire sharia. Much of this can be done in a non-discriminatory way, by simply refusing to allow special pleading to Muslims. Do not allow Islamic public calls to prayer as this is offensive to other faiths. Both boys and girls should take part in all sporting and social activities of the school and the community. The veil should be banned in public institutions, thus contributing to breaking the traditional subjugation of women. Companies and public buildings should not be forced to build prayer rooms for Muslims. Enact laws to eliminate the abuse of family reunification laws. Do not permit major investments by Muslims in Western media or universities.

The Sudetenland It is conceivable that some infidel nations will copy the Benes Decrees from Czechoslovakia in 1946, when most of the so-called Sudeten Germans had shown themselves to be a dangerous fifth column. The Czech government thus expelled them from its land. As Hugh Fitzgerald of Jihad Watch has demonstrated, there is a much better case for a Benes Decree for parts of Europe’s Muslim population now than there ever was for the Sudeten Germans.

Is that racism and Fascism you say? Muslims themselves in poll after poll state that their loyalty lies with the Islamic Umma, not with the country they live in. “I’m a Muslim living in Britain, I’m not British” is the sentiment. Well, if Muslims themselves state that their citizenship is not worth the paper it is printed upon, why not take their word for it?

David Selbourne, author of The Losing Battle with Islam thinks that “Islam’s swift progress is easily explained. For the West — but not China or India — is as politically and ideologically weak as the world of Islam is strong. The West is handicapped by many factors: its over-benign liberalism, the lost moral status of the Christian faith, the vacillations of its judiciaries and the incoherence of their judgments, political and military hesitations over strategy and tactics, poor intelligence (in both senses), and the complicities of the ‘Left’.”

Can the West defeat the Islamic threat? Selbourne states ten reasons why not, including the extent of political division in the non-Muslim world about what is afoot, the confusion of Leftist “progressives” about the Islamic advance, anti-Americanism and the vicarious satisfaction felt by many non-Muslims at America’s reverses, as well as the West’s dependency on the oil and material resources of Arab and Muslim countries.

According to him, Islam will not be defeated because “the strengths of the world community of Muslims are being underestimated.” Yet another indication that Islam’s advance will continue lies in “the skilful use being made of the media and of the world wide web in the service both of the ‘electronic jihad’”

I agree with him that the cultural weakness of the West is a major disadvantage, and has been one important reason behind the recent resurgence of Jihad. It was never inevitable that we allowed millions of Muslims to settle in our lands. This was the result of Multiculturalism and the weakening of our cultural identity, and in Europe with the deliberate help of Eurabians.

The impact of globalization and modern mass media is more complicated and has contradictory results. As one pundit at ex-Muslim Ali Sina’s website put it: “Rituals are important as brainwashing tools to instill discipline and loyalty. Islam’s focus on rituals remind me of the rituals in the military. (…) But what worked well for a medieval war machine is disastrous for Muslims in the modern world. The Arab war machine was supported by the blind obedience, brotherhood, courage, hatred and high birth rates inspired by Islam. (…) But these same qualities are handicaps for Muslims in the age of the microchip. Today they lead to poverty, belligerency, war and defeat.”

Islam was perfect for medieval warfare, but gradually lost out to the West, especially after the Scientific and Industrial Revolutions, which could never have taken place in Islamic lands because of their lack of freedom and their cult of authority. Ironically, history has now gone full circle. Muslims are still useless in developing anything new, but as a result of migration, modern communications, the presence of Muslims in infidel lands and Arab oil revenues, they can more readily buy or expropriate technology from others. The Iranian Revolution was aided by audio cassettes of speeches by the Ayatollah Khomeini.

In the book The West and the Rest: Globalization and the Terrorist Threat, Roger Scruton argues that globalization “offers militant Islam the opportunity that it has lacked since the Ottoman retreat from central Europe.” It has created “a true Islamic umma, which identifies itself across borders in terms of a global form of legitimacy, and which attaches itself like a parasite to global institutions and techniques that are the by-products of Western democracy.”

The “techniques and infrastructure on which al Qaeda depends are the gifts of the new global institutions. It is Wall Street and Zurich that produced the network of international finance that enables Osama bin Laden to conceal his wealth and to deploy it anywhere in the world. It is Western enterprise with its multinational outreach that produced the technology that bin Laden has exploited so effectively against us. And it is Western science that developed the weapons of mass destruction he would dearly like to obtain. His wealth, too, would be inconceivable without the vast oil revenues brought to Saudi Arabia from the West, there to precipitate the building boom from which his father profited.”

While Scruton gives some support to the idea that the Internet and modern communications technology have strengthened Islam, there are some contradictory views worth listening to.

Theodore Dalrymple thinks that “Islam has nothing whatever to say to the modern world,” and states that “Personally, I believe that all forms of Islam are very vulnerable in the modern world to rational criticism, which is why the Islamists are so ferocious in trying to suppress such criticism. They have instinctively understood that Islam itself, while strong, is exceedingly brittle, as communism once was. They understand that, at the present time in human history, it is all or nothing. (…) Islamism is a last gasp, not a renaissance, of the religion; but, as anyone who has watched a person die will attest, last gasps can last a surprisingly long time.”

Although some of the tensions we are seeing now are caused by Western cultural weakness, part of it is also related to the impersonal forces of technological globalization. Previously, Muslims and non-Muslims could for the most part ignore each other on a daily basis. This is no longer possible, because Muslims see the Western world on TV every day. And if somebody in, say, Denmark says something “insulting” about Muhammad — which in the 19th century would have gone unnoticed in Pakistan or Egypt — thanks to email, mobile phones and satellite TV, millions of Muslims will know about it within hours. However, this can potentially be good for non-Muslims.

Contrary to what Selbourne claims, the Internet has in fact emerged as an important, perhaps crucial factor in the Western resistance, as author Bruce Bawer has noticed: “Thank God for the [Inter]Net. I tremble at the thought of all the things that have happened during the past years that I would never have known about without it. The bloggers have in some cases reported about things that the mainstream media has left out, and in other cases pointed out omissions and distortions in the media coverage. Frequently, the mass media has felt compelled by the bloggers to pay attention to stories they would otherwise have ignored. The blogosphere is a fantastic way to spread news. If an important event has been reported in just a single, insignificant local paper, one blogger somewhere will have written about it, other bloggers will have linked to him etc. so that the news story is passed on to blog readers around the world. If Europe is saved, it will be because of the Internet.”

Columnist Caroline Glick of the Jerusalem Post praises the blogosphere and states that: “The responsibility of protecting our nations and societies from internal disintegration has passed to the hands of individuals, often working alone, who refuse to accept the degradation of their societies and so fight with the innovative tools of liberty to protect our way of life.”

J.R.R. Tolkien’s epic tale the Lord of the Rings is a story about the little people, the Hobbits, saving the day in the end. The most powerful enemy within in Tolkien’s story is the wizard Saruman. In the West now, Saruman corresponds to a whole class of people in politics, the media and academia. The Sarumans of the West are met with resistance from thousands of little hobbits in cyberspace, and they don’t like it. Pessimists claim that this era is merely the Wild West period of the Internet, which will gradually become tamed and censored. That is possible, but even if events should turn out that way, the Internet will still have given an important contribution to the Western resistance of our time.

Seaborne believes that many people are underestimating the strength of Islam. Perhaps, but some observers, including Mark Steyn and Mr. Seaborne himself, may be overestimating it. They overlook the fact that Islam has many weaknesses, too. Don’t underestimate your enemy. Muslims should be credited for making clever use of our weaknesses, but this “we’re all doomed and have already lost” theme is overblown.

We should implement a policy of containment of the Islamic world. I’m not saying that containment is all that we will ever need to do, but it is the very minimum that is acceptable. Perhaps the spread of nuclear weapons technology, the darkest side of globalization, will trigger a large-scale war with the Islamic world at some point. The only way to avoid this is to take steps, including military ones, to deprive Muslims of such technology.

We should restrain their ability to hurt us physically. We can’t prevent it completely, but we should limit it as much as possible. Muslims try to wear us down through terrorism. They should be worn down through mockery and criticism. We should also make clear that for every Islamic terror attack we will increase these efforts, which Muslims fear more than our weapons. It’s the new balance of terror.

Dr. Koenraad Elst Dr Koenraad Elst, one of Belgium’s best orientalists, thinks “Islam is in decline, despite its impressive demographic and military surge” – which according to Dr Elst is merely a “last upheaval.” He acknowledges, however, that this decline can take some time (at least in terms of the individual human life span) and that it is possible that Islam will succeed in becoming the majority religion in Europe before collapsing.

Dalrymple is probably correct when he says that Islam is an “all or nothing” religion which cannot be secularized. The future may not belong to Islam, as Mark Steyn suggests. It is conceivable that Islam in some generations will cease to be a global force of any significance, but in the meantime it will be a constant source of danger to its neighbors, from Europe through India to Southeast Asia. The good news is that Islam may not be able to achieve the world dominance it desires. The bad news is that it may be able to achieve a world war. We can only cage it as much as possible and try to prevent this from happening.

Discrediting the Source

Posted on November 21, 2006 by Baron Bodissey

The interview with the Malmö policeman posted here yesterday was drawn from a Swedish news source called Folkets Nyheter. It is described as a “Swedish nationalist” newspaper, and at least one commenter seemed to view it with some distaste.

One of the main tactics the Legacy Media use to maintain their “authority” is to discredit any information that appears in venues that are considered disreputable. For many years the Washington Times was included in such venues. It featured important news that no other paper was willing to print, but since it appeared in the Times, it could be safely ignored.

As the mainstream media become steadily more univocal, any information which doesn’t fit the template they impose must necessarily appear in other sources. Such sources are not always the most reputable publications, and may give an enlightened intellectual pause.

But the important questions that should be asked are independent of the source: Is the news credible? Can it be checked? And is it, therefore, true?

So now we return to the Malmö policeman. Fjordman considered the issue important enough to drop me a note yesterday:
– – – – – – – – – –

Regarding the online paper Folkets Nyheter that you linked to: I wasn’t familiar with this newspaper before. The situation they describe is no doubt correct, but some of the ads they run are for organizations that I would deem to have extremist views. And I do mean extremist in the real sense, including direct references to neo-Nazi groups, not in the BBC sense.

I think what you see there is a glimpse of what Sweden’s future may become, with the rise of neo-Fascists. Sweden has a history of totalitarianism, was pro-Nazi before WW2, pro-Communist during the Cold War and pro-Islamic now. One of my best Swedish friends believes they will do a complete coin flip, from PC to Fascism, within a generation. I wouldn’t be surprised if he is right.

Swedes keep bashing Denmark for “xenophobia.” But the truth is that Denmark is a lot healthier as a country. It is still possible for “normal” people to oppose mass immigration, which is very difficult in Sweden.

After Steen posted his comment, Fjordman sent me another email:

Some additions: I see that Steen from the blog Snaphanen, whom I respect a lot, says that he has seen far worse Swedish nationalist websites than this. So have I, and he’s right that freedom of speech in Sweden is virtually non-existent, and that we have to link to whatever news comes out of there. I’m still not thrilled about those ads, though.

I have called Sweden a soft-totalitarian country, but I am sometimes not so sure about the “soft” part. Opinion polls have revealed that two out of three Swedes doubt whether Islam can be combined with Swedish society, and a very significant proportion of the population have for years wanted more limitations on immigration. Yet not one party represented in Parliament is genuinely critical of the Multicultural society.

Earlier this year, the Swedish newspaper Expressen warned against the “low-intensity terrorism” conducted by extreme Leftists and neo-Nazis. But they were honest enough to admit that the extreme Leftists have tended to get away with their violence because it has been directed against the despised right-wingers. Now, their violence is increasingly aimed at established political parties and state institutions, too. Political scientist Peter Esaiasson has done research into every election movement in Sweden since 1866. According to him, the organized attempts at disrupting meetings during the 2006 elections had no parallels in modern history.

We at Gates of Vienna know all too well the “bad company” riff that goes with the turf. Because of our (and Fjordman’s) anti-immigration stances, we have been linked by various sites we find repugnant, from generic white-supremacy types to outright Nazis with swastikas prominent in their site headers. It’s just one of the risks that one takes when expressing opinions like ours.

Such links will be used to discredit us, just as the neo-Nazi ads are used to discredit Folkets Nyheter. When dissent is ruled out of polite conversation, it is forced into the same area as impolite conversation, even when the content is well-reasoned, temperate, and above all, valid.
Swine
A man who is locked out of the house during a blizzard is forced to shelter in the byre with the swine.

The Fjordman Files

Posted on November 20, 2006 by Baron Bodissey

The Dutch blogger Klein Verzet has performed an important service by maintaining a list of all the writings of Fjordman at a permanent post called “The Fjordman Files”. His listing is broken down by topic, and then sorted in chronological order.

Klein Verzet wrote me last week to say that some of his readers were not completely satisfied with the organization of his list, and thought it would be better arranged in other ways (chronological, alphabetical, etc.) He is consulting with Fjordman to determine the best way to list all the posts.

I suggested that we could do multiple lists, each indexed differently. If the posts were kept in a database with certain data fields associated with each one, web page listings could be generated automatically. I volunteered to do the necessary programming and generate the HTML. It was relatively easy to populate my database tables, thanks to the excellent work done previously by Klein Verzet.

Eventually Klein Verzet will probably draw on one or more of my lists to use for his “Fjordman Files” post. But, in the meantime, I’ve posted the different lists on a page here. It is current as of today’s post at Brussels Journal, as far as I know.

There are four different indexes: chronological, by topic, by location (Jihad Watch, Brussels Journal, and Gates of Vienna), and alphabetical. When a secondary sort is used, it is alphabetical.
– – – – – – – – – –
Readers are invited to help me in two ways:

1.		Notify me of Fjordman essays that have been posted, but aren’t on my list yet.
2.		Make suggestions for changes to the “Fjordman Files” page, e.g. use a different index, revise the topic used to list a given post, etc.

The distributed intelligence of the VRWC on the internet will eventually produce a useful way of indexing and listing Fjordman’s work. At the rate he is producing posts (several a week in recent months), we will definitely need such a system.

When Good Men Run in the Other Direction

Posted on November 20, 2006 by Baron Bodissey

Part of John Bolton’s inability to get through the Senate Foreign Relations Committee is the result of opposition from Republican Sen. Lincoln Chafee.

Chafee, who lost his re-election and is considering whether to leave the GOP altogether, said he has not changed his reservations about Bolton nor does he think now is the time for a fight.

“The American people have spoken out against the president’s agenda on a number of fronts, and presumably one of those is on foreign policy,” Chafee said. “And at this late stage in my term, I’m not going to endorse something the American people have spoke [sic] out against.”

May he indeed indulge his pout and leave the GOP, the quicker the better for all concerned. Then the GOP won’t back him anymore. The party political machine is ruining the party. Had they backed the contender in the primary against Chafee, they would have been seen as putting principles above politics-as-usual. But — in the same way the machine took Specter over Toomey in Pennsylvania — the better man didn’t win, the party machine won and the people lost another opportunity to make a real choice.

As both party machines begin more and more to resemble The Robots from Hell, more and more voters are going to start claiming independence from their respective parties. Oh, not that the unions will ever be other than what they are, but their members will grow increasingly disaffected with the corrupt hierarchy, which lines its pockets at the mandatory expense of the rank-and-file.

And we are witnessing the slow erosion of a previously solid “African American = Democrat” equation as people begin to grow up and grow away from a defensive, victimized view of the spoils system in a country of abundance. African Americans are too diverse, too conservative in their social views, and too successful financially to stay within the victim rôle they’ve been squeezed into by academia and the MSM. That scam no longer has the grip it once did. Age will do that, and this monolithic myth of the African American vote is definitely old… and about as useful as predictions about the Lithuanian-American vote.
– – – – – – – – – – – –
But I don’t see union members or African Americans joining the Republican Party anytime soon. The ’pubs have betrayed too many of their own principles to attract those who have grown disaffected with the current political choices.

Third parties haven’t accomplished anything but Democrat victories, which turn into ever larger tumors on the body politic. So, for the moment — that is, for the next two elections — there is no hope for a third party. Not without a co-coordinated terrorist attack, anyway. If that happens, all bets are off.

But suppose CAIR and its fellow travelers really are bright enough to realize that the worst thing that could happen to them is their co-religionists blowing up parts of America? Suppose they merely keep up their non-violent, immensely well-funded erosion of American culture and self-confidence? In other words, suppose there are no more attacks?

Will it then be a repeat of the same incredibly short-sighted American foreign policy that has held sway almost since the moment Jefferson got chummy with the French? That may have been the biggest mistake the US ever made — sending Jefferson to Paris. Will we simply go down the same road as the French? Of course the path the French take is never paved with good intentions; it’s peculiar how France always winds up in Hell nonetheless.

Is there a way to do an end run around that third party problem? Can a rump group start flapping the Republican tent? Can they field someone who follows through on smaller government ideals? Someone who conserves what is whole and principled in the American character? Someone who could attract once more the better angels of our nature? I don’t see anyone on the horizon.

As for the Dems, except for the extreme left and the professional, opportunistic victim-whores like Jesse Jackson and cardboard suits like John Edwards, or strange attractors like John Kerry (who has a permanently wind-chapped finger from holding it up to test which way things are going), there aren’t any spokesmen for the Dem base. At least not any who look human. And is the Dem base ever base — just look at George Soros and Michael Moore. Not to mention Jimmah. If Yasser Arafat were still alive and had American citizenship, he’d be a Democrat.

So is there room anywhere for someone who refuses to be pigeon-holed, who has a record of principled service, who has not spent his whole adult life on the public dole (as Clinton did before he “retired”)? Can anyone be found who is willing to run for office based on his beliefs, not on what he believed after he saw the polls? It sure would help if he could speak effectively, too — not a professional speaker, just an effective one. Lincoln had a high whine in his voice, which journalists made fun of, but Lincoln’s words moved his listeners.

It’s a long, sad road back to Hubert Humphrey, and the way is blocked by relentless time and tragedy. But you get the idea from the names I’ve mentioned: Lincoln and Humphrey — different parties, but the same firm hold on what they believed and were willing to act upon. And the same ability to get people to cooperate in a common task. In other words, someone who can lead.

The most “attractive” candidate to most of us would be someone who —

believed in the sovereignty of the United States,
was willing to defend that sovereignty,
had the qualities of leadership to unite the center of this country,
was able to build bridges to the disaffected,
viewed our current tax system as a counter-productive, hideous beast,
and galvanized us to demand sacrifice from our public servants, rather than more sacrifice from the citizenry.

I have no idea who that might be. So far, the only people we are permitted to see are the ones who are able to elbow their way onto the MSM stage and shout the loudest, shortest sound bites.

At the moment, those most willing to serve exist in a bubble inside the Beltway. Some have been able to look less-than-hideous, some have kept their hands clean enough not to get caught naked in the middle of the street taking money from the Mafia, and some have enough staff to keep them in a vertical position with sufficient sound bite material to prevent them from looking grossly impaired. Mainly, though, the shenanigans in our capitol seem to be par for the political course… and a pitted, bald, and snake-bitten course it is.

Seems like the only people who want to play this game anymore are either the kind your mother warned you to stay away from, or the ones who fooled your mother, like Eddie Haskell or Hillary Clinton.

The good ones don’t run for office — they run in the other direction.

Cross-posted at Infidel Bloggers Alliance.

We’re on Our Way to Hell

Posted on November 20, 2006 by Baron Bodissey

This is a translation by Steen of Snaphanen of an interview with a policeman in the southern Swedish city of Malmö. The original Swedish version was published in Folkets Nyheter on November 12th.

Steen wrote to Charlotte Thorbjörnsson of Folkets Nyheter about the interview, and this was her reply:

I confirm it’s authentic; we’ve done quite a few of these interviews with people the press won’t touch, but I can’t reveal the policeman’s identity. We’ll make a clarification on the site as soon as possible.

Steen then sent it to me and said, “It ought to be spread to the world.”

Here’s the interview with a Malmö policeman:

“As a cop, you see the consequences of the decisions taken by the politicians in a very concrete way. Sweden’s immigration policy is basically a total failure. Moreover, this experiment costs enormous amounts of money each year. Politicians now try to fumble and tinker around retroactively with different ideas and measures. But it is obvious to every thinking human being that things are about to go to hell — said in plain speech.”

So says an executive police officer — who has been working in Malmö for a number of years — to the newspaper Folkets Nyheter about his work situation, which during recent years has changed dramatically. And he is totally aware of the causes of the changes for the worse. Malmö is a city with one of Sweden’s highest immigration percentages; 40% of the inhabitants there have an entirely foreign background. And, as in many of the country’s other cities, violence and robbery — as well as the Swedes’ fear of falling victim to this violence — have become part of Malmö’s everyday life.

– – – – – – – – – –

The Skåne [southern Swedish province] newspaper Sydsvenskan contended in a leader earlier this year that democracy in Sweden is intact, and that the “ceiling of debate” in Sweden is high. Still, the newspaper is obliged to publish this interview anonymously, to avoid putting the police officer’s position in jeopardy.

“Today, we have freedom of neither expression nor opinion in Sweden”, he comments. “As long as you think the same way as the political power elite, you’re welcome for promotion — but otherwise? Look what happened to my colleague.”

The colleague he referred to is Bengt Lindström, formerly a Malmö policeman, who was transferred by the country’s supreme police authority Rikspolisstyrelsen, because he had criticized the consequences of mass immigration, such as a lack of community service for Malmö’s elderly. The decision has had impact on a large portion of the police force, says the officer.

“Today, no officer would dare to express criticism on any of these issues, neither on nor off duty. They are concerned about their position and livelihood. Rikspolisstyrelsen made an example of Lindström’s transfer: ‘And don’t criticize us, unless you want to lose the rest of your job.’“

He totally agrees with Bengt Lindström’s criticism of the Malmö situation.

“If they refuse to assist our elderly, who have worked their entire life to help construct this country, then this gives me a pain in my heart. Recently, the government sent the municipalities another 1.7 billion SEK [see this currency converter], so they can handle the load of all the illegal immigrants. Of course, we Swedes would primarily have to take care of our fellow citizens.

“The number of cases involving rough violence against individuals on public property has risen sharply since the beginning of the ’90s, when I started my work in Malmö. The perpetrators of robbery and bodily harm on public property are almost always immigrant youngsters. This is well-documented, but the authorities responsible prefer not to report it. It would be against the country’s integration propaganda, so they prefer to remain silent.

“The fact that also the number of rapes in Malmö has grown sharply is related to the fact that 40% of Malmö’s inhabitants have a different ethnic background, and where the men’s power over the women is total. Their view of women is so totally alien to us Swedish men, and they continue to live according to their culture without regard to the fact that they are in a different country with different laws. Unfortunately, this attitude is being reinforced by Swedish authorities and courts who show regard for the suspect’s culture when making decisions.”

This police officer confirms also the negative reception which police and emergency services encounter in Malmö’s immigrant suburbs.

“Many immigrants have not the slightest respect for Swedish cops. You’re often treated like a trashman. Immigrants have so far only met representatives of the immigration and social services. They have been treated very friendly and seen all their demands met.

“Certain routine matters, such as a driving license check with an immigrant in Rosengård, get easily out of hand and develop into a major incident, where all patrol cars must intervene to re-establish order. Thanks to cellphones, many ‘supporters’ gather when we intervene in Rosengård. If we stop a car for a routine check, the entire clan shows up to work against the police.

“Unfortunately, large parts of the Swedish populace have a biased view of what is going on, and this is owed 99% to the partial view of reality provided by the mass media. For example, often the term ‘youth gang’ is used, instead of using plain language and saying that those causing the problems are criminal gangs of Albanian origin — as is the case in Landskrona.

“I’d like to emphasize that it’s not ‘Per’ or ‘Stina’ who act like dirt. It is immigrant gangs who try to take control and spread fear among normal people. Unfortunately, society has shown such a degree of unbelievable leniency towards this kind of behavior, that there is reason for serious concern with regard to future developments.

“I have full understanding for individuals organizing in vigilante groups, and who get involved in one of the most important questions that exist, which is one’s own family’s safety. If society fails then you unfortunately have to take things into your own hands. In fact, it is your right to defend yourself and your property. You may even use the force necessary to protect yourself.”

The officer says it is evident that the immigrants’ tendency towards violence and crime is hidden and explained away, because a clique in the corridors of power has decided so.

“My personal theory is that there are individuals who have their political roots in the late 60s. The so-called flum [sorry, couldn’t find this word — translator] left. The individuals that studied at the university in 1968 occupy high posts of society today, and they contribute to the moral decay and degeneration happening right before our eyes.”

Talking about the political power in southern Sweden’s Skåne province and three of its best-known representatives — supreme prosecutor Sven-Erik Alhem, district council Ilmar Reepalu/Malmö and sheriff Anders Danielsson — the officer says:

“All of these three represent the hardened power structure at different levels in Sweden, and none of them seems capable of thinking independently. They just act to make their superiors happy and couldn’t care less about the opinion of their fellow countrymen. They’re only puppets of Sweden’s political power today. Corruption among friends and guarding one’s power position is more important to them than taking care of the problems and tasks they are assigned to. All of them know each other personally and maintain private contacts.

“Alhem looks to me and most other colleagues like a big clown only interested in making himself look good. He has long ago lost contact with reality. Alhem is a vivid fan of multi-culturalism. That this multi-culturalism leads to a negative development in society and its safety is of no concern to him.”

The officer hopes that Sweden’s actual situation will force more and more Swedes to wake up.

“Sooner or later, we all have to realize that things cannot go on like this. Practical policies must change radically. You and I and our families have a duty to maintain our ancestors’ heritage, the heritage of those who helped to build a successful nation.

“There is no multi-cultural society on earth which could show a positive development.

“There is only one alternative, and it’s called preserving tradition. See the positive things that our ancestors have built. A society in good order which defends the family and which creates the conditions necessary to live, to develop and to feel safe. To care for one’s family and one’s own must be self-evident for all Swedes.”

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

Anglo-Saxon limitations to free speech:

“… things like child pornography, false statements that result in demonstrable harm (defamation), the exposure of national security information, commercial fraud, and the proverbial shouting of ‘Fire!’ in a crowded theater” — nothing else.

Going to Bat for Bolton

Posted on November 19, 2006 by Baron Bodissey

Don Quixote Just for fun, I thought I’d turn the tables on a blog dedicated to stopping Bolton’s nomination. I’m not going to link to it – the knaves – but I will tell you it’s a group affiliated with The World Federalist Movement, those lovely folk dedicated to the takeover of the US by the UN.

Given their agenda, it’s no wonder they find Bolton’s complaints about the sexual abuse and corruption of UN blue birds so offensive. They list his disgust with the UN’s business as usual as one of his “blunders.”

The one-world folks – the transnationalists – want Bolton out of there. And they may well have their way. Bolton was in Washington this weekend, meeting with senators in an attempt to save his ambassadorship. But there are too many vested interests who know how dangerous he is to changing the paradigm; he’s got to go. And there are far too many who are determined to make President Bush look bad, no matter what the cost, even if it’s the further erosion of our soveregnity.

The Administration has sent Bolton’s nomination back up to the Hill anyway. One has to admire them for trying. Bolton is the best thing since Jeanne Kirkpatrick served in the same post. Of the UN, former Ambassador Kirkpatrick said:

As I watched the behavior of the nations of the U.N. (including our own), I found no reasonable ground to expect any one of those governments to transcend permanently their own national interests for those of another country.

I conclude that it is a fundamental mistake to think that salvation, justice, or virtue come through merely human institutions.

Democracy not only requires equality but also an unshakable conviction in the value of each person, who is then equal. Cross cultural experience teaches us not simply that people have different beliefs, but that people seek meaning and understand themselves in some sense as members of a cosmos ruled by God.

The one-worlders, groups like the American-based (as in based right across the street from the UN building) World Federalist Movement, find Bolton offensive? Imagine what they’d do now to Kirkpatrick.

Here’s an amended phone script that one of the stop Bolton sites uses as its prompter for those who call to protest the idea of Bolton’s continuance in office. I changed it a little so you can use it to call in to register your voice for Bolton.
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Word is, the White House may try an end run around the Foreign Relations Committee and do a second recess appointment of Bolton while the swollen plutocrats are off for Christmas. It may give Joe Biden apoplexy. John Kerry will shake his finger and give endless lectures. You and I could write the ~~screeches~~ speeches he will give at the drop of his lucky hat if the Executive branch does appoint Bolton again.

Anyone know if Bolton is financially sound enough to work without pay? Because that is what it will cost him for this work-around of the advise and consent procedures. Unless of course, Representative Jefferson is willing to loan him a little cold cash to tide him over.

In the meantime, here’s what to do: Call and make your voice heard. And let them know what you think of our appropriations for the UN while you’re at it.

Phone Script

When on the phone with Senator’s office, you won’t be speaking with the Senator. You’ll be calling a staff assistant whose job it is to answer the phone, find out what YOU care about, and pass your views along to the Senator.

CALLER: Hello, my name is (name) and I live in (hometown). I’m calling because I want the Senator to support John Bolton. Our U.N. Ambassador has been standing up for the United States and the cause of liberty, and is doing a great job.

STAFF: Assistant will either state the Senator’s position or volunteer to pass along your views.

CALLER: Great, thanks. Let the Senator know I’ll be keeping track of his/her stance on the issue.

Here are the current members of that esteemed and august body, the U.S. Senate, along with their phone numbers. Those listed in red are on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, so they are more important and should be contacted first, since they are the gatekeepers on whether or not this nomination ever reaches the floor. Anyone taking bets with Joe Biden in charge and John Kerry bringing up the rear?

The “web” links are to the contact pages on their individual Senate websites.

Alabama

R Jeff Sessions

(202) 224-4124