UPDATE: oops, that’s eight US attorneys, not attorneys general. Doh.

[Thanks to commenter nms for pointing out the blooper. They’re still fired, though, so amuse yourselves with something else while I make the necessary changes]

Really, Mr. President! When are you going to start following the leadership standard set by William Jefferson Clinton? You have some problems, sir:

• First of all, unlike Mr. Clinton you have yet to find an attorney general with Janet Reno’s charisma and competence. And neither one of your appointees have set any compounds on fire, killing women and children. Surely you can do better than that?
• How about Mr. Clinton’s assistant Attorney General? Remember the one who went to jail for fraud committed during the Reign of Bill and Hillary in Arkansas? What was Hillary’s Arkansas law partner’s name? Rubble? Double Bubble? Oh….right: it was Hubbell, wasn’t it? I wonder if they still get together for cookouts?
• You’ve only fired eight [US] attorneys, Mr. Bush. Come on. Mr. Clinton sacked ninety three of ‘em right at the start and gave them ten days to clear out. That sir is politics presidential behavior, with Mr. Clinton setting the pace. You owe us eighty five more heads.
• And while we’re at it, please illegally pull those hundreds of FBI files on five hundred or so former Democratic employees. So what if it was illegal? Legality was a mere trifle for Bill and Hill; so it ought to be for George and Laura. Give us Filegate II, Mr. Bush. I mean, really, is Scooter Libby the best you can manage? Pardon my saying so, sir, but that’s real bush league mendacity when it comes to law-breaking. You need to have a chat with Bill for pointers. Or perhaps Hillary instead; Herself is the one with the killer instinct. Why you haven’t even had a White House associate fall on his sword yet. For Betsy’s sake, where’s your sense of hillbilly honor?
• Last but not least, why don’t you destroy the travel office? Ruin a few lives so you can put your Texas pals in place?

Let’s face it, President Bush: what the moonbats say is true. You don’t follow the Clinton playbook, and that’s the root of your problem.

Besides which, you haven’t let Laura set policy in secret, or throw lamps at your philandering head. Oh. I forgot. You don’t do interns. Well, get busy, boy! You don’t have much time left to follow that act.

Here’s what Opinion Journal has to say:

Congressional Democrats are in full cry over the news this week that the Administration’s decision to fire eight U.S. Attorneys originated from—gasp—the White House. Senator Hillary Clinton joined the fun yesterday, blaming President Bush for “the politicization of our prosecutorial system.” Oh, my.

“Oh, my” is correct. Give us the other eighty five [US] attorneys right this minute. I want their heads on a platter. We deserve no less.

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

[Nothing further. This was more than enough]

Regular Gates of Vienna readers are familiar with Lars Hedegaard, the writer and columnist for the Danish newspaper Berlingske Tidende. Fjordman has cited his writings several times, and more recently he awarded Daniel Pipes the Freedom of Speech Prize in Copenhagen.

Jonathan Robertsson, who is a high school student in Stockholm, translated the following television interview of Lars Hedegaard. The interview was shown on Axess Television on October the 15th, 2006.

Translating this was a huge task, and we owe Jonathan a debt of gratitude for undertaking the effort.

In this interview, TG = Swedish journalist and interviewer Thomas Gür; LH = Lars Hedegaard, founder and president of Trykkefrihetsselskabet (The Society for Freedom of the Press). The translator’s annotations are in square brackets.

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

TG (introduction):		Welcome to Global Axess in Avesta. Today’s show is being recorded. We’re about to meet the journalist and author Lars Hedegaard from Denmark. Among other books he has written is I krigens hus — islams kolonisering av Väst [“In the House of War — Islam’s Colonization of the Western World”] — Welcome, Lars!
LH:		Thank you.
NARRATOR:		Lars Hedegaard is a historian, author, journalist and president of the organization Trykkefrihedsselskabet. Since the 1990s he has dedicated a large part of his time to studying the influence of Islam in European and Western civilization, and has published a lot of articles on the subject in the Danish press. He has also, along with his colleagues Brix and Hansen, written one of the most controversial books in Denmark in recent years: In the House of War — Islam’s Colonization of the Western World.
TG:		Is Islam today a threat to the secularized character of the Danish state?
LH:		Not only to the Danish state, but to the secularism in the entire Western world. You could say it has been during its entire history. We’re living in a period which dates back to the Iranian revolution in 1979 and has led us into a third Jihad; a third Holy War against the Western world, and also against other neighbours. From our point of view it must be considered as a third Jihad.
TG:		Aren’t these parallels quite extreme, historically? The Islamic assault of the 1000’s was of a different character than expansion of the Ottoman Empire. And today it’s about migration. It doesn’t have the characteristics of war.
LH:		Well, it does have the characteristics of war. The obstacle for Islam is that today they can’t expand militarily in the more developed West. They could do so in the first Jihad; the Arabic Jihad right after the death of Mohammed. They also could in what we can call the second Jihad, the Turkish or the Ottoman Jihad. In those days they had the opportunity to defeat their enemies with armed might. But that phase of history ended at the end of the 17th century when they couldn’t defeat Europe at Vienna, in 1683. That was the last time they tried. Then there was a retreat by Islam due to an inner collapse of Muslim society. What today is called Jihad is carried out with help of migration, the export of populations, and other methods. There are no armed forces, but there is money… If we take a look at what has happened the last twenty-five years we can see that Saudi Arabian forces have invested almost sixty-five billion dollars for political and ideological influence in the Western world.

– – – – – – – – – –

TG:		Now you’re talking about these Saudi Arabian foundations…?
LH:		Yes. Foundations, mosques, mission societies. Something particularly special today is their influence in universities, research institutions, etc., to which they give large grants. It is implicit that there will not be any research that is critical of Islam. Islam is described as something nice; it’s described as an essentially peaceful, tolerant and lovely religion. Islam means peace, they say, which it does. But it principally means submission to God’s will.
TG:		You’re talking like there is one Islam. Now we know that the Saudi Arabian influence is a particularly radical interpretation of Islam from the Wahhabist days during the 18th century. At the same time there are about 1.5 billions Muslims and therefore many different ways of worshiping Islam. Can we talk about a united Islam the way you do?
LH:		Islam is assuming different forms. But we have to say there is an essence, something central and something compulsory for everyone who calls himself a Muslim. And you can mention some of the things characterizing Islam in general. First and foremost your understanding as a Muslim must be the belief that the Koran is the direct word from God, his message to the world, not up for discussion, and since the 9th century not subject to any interpretation. Such a thing doesn’t exist at all! Despite the fact that today’s Koran is only a possible Koran. There are other possible Korans. I know that one of the speakers at the seminar will release a book this autumn called Which Koran?. I’m looking forward to reading it. He isn’t the first to show there are several ways to understand the Koran; the Koran demands a critical analysis.
TG:		Aren’t you in the same position as the Islamic fundamentalists who also are suggesting there is only one Islam? And all the others, even Muslims, saying Islam can be understood in different ways? For instance, we have the Mu’tazilite movement suggesting that the Koran can’t be the words from God. But they’re heretics, according to the radical Muslims. Aren’t you in general suggesting the same thing; there can only be one Islam and all Muslims in general are identical to each other?
LH:		No, I’m not saying there cannot be other ways of Islam. I’m saying there are not any other ways of Islam. I can’t find any other way of following Islam that has lasted historically. I know there are other doctrines of Islam. The Mu’tazilites had one doctrine in the 9th century, but they no longer exist as a movement or tendency within Islam. I know that there are variations even today. There are Iranian ayatollahs whose opinion of Islam is different, a more radical opinion. But those are not folks that haven’t opposed… I’m not stuck with the thought of one possible Islam, but there is one Islamic opinion which has appeared most frequently: that the Koran as we know it today is God’s direct message to the world and that it is not reduced when we are discussing it. And another thing is… If you “scratch the surface” of those who call themselves “moderate” Muslims — I admit that there are moderate Muslims, but not as many as you might have thought. If we scratch the surface of them, we can see that their moderation consists of their intentions to introduce Sharia laws with peaceful methods. The Muslims we call extremists intends to introduce it with violence. But the moderation doesn’t consist in a more moderate intention. Their intentions are the same.
TG:		Are you also claiming that the Sharia law is unchangeable?
LH:		Yes.
TG:		In Mohammed’s days slavery was allowed according to the Sharia. Today there aren’t any competent persons saying slavery is morally correct. Isn’t even the Sharia changeable when it changes due to certain circumstances? Aren’t you being a bit dogmatic?
LH:		I’m a historian; I’m neither a dogmatic, nor a preacher, nor a philosopher. And I’m not a guide to the future. I keep to what has happened in the past. When you mention slavery, you’re claiming that slavery is something moderate Muslims are opposed to. I don’t agree with you. I’ve never heard any Muslim specifically oppose slavery.
TG:		But there is no Islamic country that legally permits slavery.
LH:		Well, yes there is… Sudan legally allows slavery. They have slave-markets where hundreds of thousands are gathered. I don’t know if it’s legal, but in Saudi Arabia there is slavery, and in Africa, and so on. I’m attaching to… Now, I’ve got special knowledge about the Danish conditions….
TG:		But if we look at the Danish conditions in particular — the imams who took the twelve Mohammed cartoons and the three fakes and tried to get support in Saudi Arabia; are they traitors to their country? Should we consider them to be enemies of the Danish state and community? [These imams went to Egypt were they called for Muslims to burn Danish embassies. There were three faked cartoons.]
LH:		To be a traitor to one’s country, you must belong to the country you’re betraying. You can’t betray Denmark unless you’re a Dane.
TG:		They don’t even feel solidarity with the country they’re inciting…?
LH:		No.
TG:		Is it a fifth column?
LH:		Yes, I think we can say it is.
TG:		Influence agents…?
LH:		I don’t want to give them that designation, due to the fact that some have judicial cases pending.
TG:		You don’t want to be charged with anything?
LH:		I’d prefer to avoid it. I’m not normally afraid, but… I want to say that they behave, even if they’ve got Danish citizenship, which not many of them have got… Even if they have got residence permits or citizenships, they neither feel nor behave like Danes.
TG:		How does a Dane behave?
LH:		A Dane behaves in many ways, but a Dane doesn’t go abroad to encourage to anti-Danish activity such as burning embassies. You do not accuse compatriots of racism and hostility to aliens. Such behaviour isn’t related to the country they’ve come to. They are not like the Nazis during WWII in Denmark who left their country for military service on the Eastern front. Then it was a question of betrayal to your country.
TG:		But what about native Danes converting to Islam? Are they betraying the Danish thing?
LH:		There is no “Danish thing”. There are several things, but…
TG:		But are they selling out the Danish things [I think the word TG is looking for is CULTURE] if they convert to Islam?
LH:		I don’t know anything about that.
TG:		Can you be a Dane and a Muslim?
LH:		Yes, you can.
TG:		You can be a Muslim believer and a good patriotic Dane?
LH:		“Patriotic Danes” is not my choice of language. There are several ways to be a Dane: You could be conservative, you could be a socialist, you could be a communist, you could be an atheist, a libertine or an alcoholic, and in the same time be a Dane. But if one individual who converts to Islam whose last name is Jensen or Lars in first name [both typical names for a Dane], I don’t want to judge that individual’s personal reason or intention.. You’re asking me if you can be a believer; That depends on what you mean with “believe”.
TG:		Are there no moderate Muslims in Denmark? Isn’t MP Naser Khader, a practicing Muslim, an example of how you could be a secularized Danish Muslim?
LH:		Notice what he is called by his opponents in the Muslim community in Denmark: he is called an apostate.
TG:		That’s what they are calling him, but what do you call him? What do you, as a non-Muslim, call Naser Khader, who is saying “I’m a Dane and a Muslim at the same time and you can be both of them”? What do you call him?
LH:		I call him a Dane!
TG:		He can be a Muslim… But is… his Islam an apostate-Islam, an Islam of betrayal?
LH:		According to authorities within Islam his Islam is a treacherous one. But it is not my place to say if someone is a good or a bad Muslim. I know Naser Khader, and I have respect for him. I don’t consider him as someone apart from me.
TG:		But he is a Muslim and believes that the Koran is God’s word.
LH:		I don’t know about that, you may ask him about that…
TG:		If we leave him, and look forward — What is going to happen with Denmark? In your book and in several articles you’ve written you are suggesting that in the year 2060, within two generations, the immigrants and their children will be in the majority, and a very large part of them will be Muslims, and that Danish culture will face a menace.
LH:		Yes.
TG:		What will happen? Is the Danish native population just going to watch the country, in your scenario, be taken over?
LH:		That is something you could speculate about for a long time, but it is not a specifically Danish problem — the same thing will happen in Sweden, but even quicker. In Sweden you don’t have to wait until 2060 before the native population is a minority in their own country. But I don’t know if that is decisive.
TG:		But isn’t that a very static view; to think that people, in several generations, won’t identify themselves with the country in which they were born and raised? Many Swedes and Danes is of foreign extraction, but still are assimilated. You’re pulling the numbers statically forward and…
LH:		There’s a reason for that; Denmark and many other countries have received a large portion of population which has come from outside. We have a Jewish population that doesn’t create any problems.
TG:		Can you even say they came from outside?
LH:		Well, originally they came from outside
TG:		Well, originally even the Danes came from outside! Now you’re talking about the Jews as they came from the outside when they’ve been in Denmark for tens of generation
LH:		That’s correct, they came in the end of the 17th century, but…
TG:		But isn’t this a way of counting people from where they’ve come from…?
LH:		But you have to include a historical point of view while inquiring: is there one single example among Muslim minorities who have come to a non-Muslim country and have let themselves be integrated together with the country in question’s native population? — I’m not familiar with any such example.
TG:		But aren’t the Finnish Crimean Tatars an example of this? Even though that’s a very small minority consisting of 800-900 people but…
LH:		Yes… I paid a visit there once.
TG:		Outside their mosque there is a Muslim crescent, the Finnish flag, and a list those who died for their country in the war [in the Winter War against the Soviet Union in 1939-40].
LH:		Those are a couple of hundred, but you can’t compare them with…
TG:		But you asked: “Is there one example…?” and when you’re receiving one, then you’re saying it’s not included because they are so few. Is that the condition? That they should be so few to get integrated? Is it a question about demography or ideology?
LH:		It is a question about their religion.
TG:		But the Finnish Crimean Tatars, they’re still Muslims.
LH:		Yes, I know. I visited them once in Tampere… I consider them just as secularized as us, but that’s a peripheral example.
TG:		Are you saying that you can’t be a Muslim and secularized?
LH:		I’m not saying that.
TG:		You’re saying they are as secular as us but can still be Muslims, can’t they?
LH:		You shouldn’t repeat theoretical conceptions, you should notice what actually happens. I don’t doubt that there are many with a Muslim background or a Muslim name who don’t go to the mosque or are living differently. What we can see is this: when imams move into the neighbourhood, with normal relations reversed, they are taking over the administrative power and influence. In Denmark, for instance, it happens that the second or third generations of Muslims are less integrated than the first. That is shown by research in which we can see that 25% of the first generation of Muslims say they are religious and among the Muslim youths 75% say they are religious. But from experience it is impossible to integrate a big Muslim population.
TG:		Are we credulous in the West when we accept that fundamentalist countries are sending their religious preachers to Muslim minorities? Something that… If we had a Danish or a Swedish minority of population in Saudi Arabia, and if we sent Danish or Swedish priests over there — since they would never allow that, are we credulous as we let the Saudi Arabian provide significant support and ideological direction…?
LH:		You could say we are credulous. You could also say we are suffering from presumption. We think too much about ourselves. We are convinced that our culture is the best one in the world, the strongest one, the culture everyone wants. We can’t even imagine people coming over here from, for instance, the Middle East and wanting to become something else other than like the Swedes, the Danes. We do not see that they prefer their own culture. Of course, that is “blue-eyed” of us. It is stupid of us that we accept doctrines which mustn’t… If religion was a personal relationship between you and your God, and was of no matter for society, then it wouldn’t matter at all. But if you come with a religion, and just not a religion; also a political ideology, a system of legislation, a way of living, a way of thinking that forms the society, that forms the relations between men and women, parents and children etc., that is against the civilization we’ve built for hundreds of years; then it is naïve!
TG:		But your image of the future is very dark and depressing. Politically speaking: what should the native — still the majority of — Danes do? Should they outlaw the operations of the fundamentalist foundations? Should they require… What should the native Danes do? Should they throw out those who act as a fifth column?
LH:		I’m not the person to be asked that question. When that question was asked of me I used to say that the politicians and parties who have voted for and allowed this development…
TG:		But that is all the parties, except from one perhaps but…?
LH:		Yes, but you still must ask them in any case. I’ve said that that they should have implemented another policy.
TG:		But haven’t the Danish people stood behind these politicians, because they vote and give the power and influence to these parties who don’t share your analysis?
LH:		They haven’t discussed it with the voters, they haven’t presented the arguments. The fault lies with those who have known about this, people whose specialty is this topic. I’m thinking about specialists on religion, the Middle-East, and Islam. They must have known how it has been, and how it has gone with the so-called culture collision between Islam and the West. The Danish people have not had the opportunity to take a position in that question. When I was studying history at the University of Århus, then history of Islam was something that nobody even had a thought on! No one was interested of it because it was so incredibly remote; there was simply no issue. Today we have a situation in which I don’t know what to do. I can’t recommend anything.
TG:		But if we look at your historical perspective — regarding that second period, you’re saying there was a second assault. What happened then was that the Ottoman Empire did not force the Christians to convert to Islam, but let them have their religions. Large parts of Balkans still were Christian; Greek Orthodox, Serbian Orthodox, Catholicism in Croatia…
LH:		It is a beautiful picture you’re suggesting… First: It was about conversion by force to a great extent. Secondly: The Christians were surrendered.
TG:		They had a second-rank status. But it was never Islamization, was it? Isn’t it therefore things are like they are today, with the balkanization?
LH:		It was an Islamization, otherwise there wouldn’t be any Muslims in Albania or in Bosnia. Besides — Are you familiar with the Dev Sharma system?
TG:		Yes. But that was mostly young men who were taken as slaves.
LH:		They were enslaved and converted by force to Islam. They imported slaves from present southern Russia. The idea that it must have been an idyllic condition of tolerance and respect is entirely incorrect. This is also the case in Andalusia, which is spoken of as a time that was unsurpassingly nice and tolerant, but of course that wasn’t the case. To end with what I think will happen — I’m not a politician — I don’t think that the European states, not only Denmark, will be Islamic states, even though the native would be fewer than the Muslims. I don’t think the natives will adjust to the Muslim culture. Countries will be divided into enclaves.
TG:		But if we look at the assault of the 1000’s as you describe it, the 17th century, and today; in the 10th and the 17th century Europe could confront Islam militarily, with armed force. We can’t do that now… Then the question becomes: With this depressing vision you describe, how should the Western world handle the assault? When we are suffering from presumption, thinking that everyone want to have the same culture that we do, when we can’t have armed forces and when we can’t stop the ideological influence, what’s going to happen?
LH:		The countries will be divided and lose their unified character. The societies will be divided into enclaves. It won’t be multicultural, it will be monocultures; one culture will be in charge in each place, like in a mosaic. Parts of Malmö, if it hasn’t already happened, are going to surrender to Sharia. That is also the case for Denmark and other towns in Sweden… Countries will be divided, so that we can no longer talk about Denmark, Sweden or Germany.
TG:		It’s going to be like Lebanon, you say? Like a civil war?
LH:		Yes, I think… It will be a sort of permanent low-intensity war, where the different enclaves are fighting each other, partly like Lebanon…
TG:		When does it become reality?
LH:		Within the next fifteen to twenty years.
TG:		We will see if you’re right, or hopefully — I suppose also you think — wrong.
LH:		Let’s hope so, or that I’ll be dead!

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

Afterword by Jonathan Robertsson:

In the debate among the skeptics of multiculturalism, there is a claim that Europe sometime in the future will be part of big Islamic state. As mentioned in your blog, author D.C. Alden has created a fictional example of their scenario in his book Invasion. Among those who think that that is Europe’s future, we have, for instance, Mark Steyn and Christopher Hitchens. Lars Hedegaard, on the other hand, says something else: He says that the European people will never accept any form of Islamic legislation; that Europeans will never accept their status as dhimmis. I wonder if anyone else has thought about it the way Hedegaard has. He means we Europeans are credulous, that we can’t imagine that someone from another culture arriving in Europe doesn’t want our way of life. And, frighteningly, he is right.

In my family and among my friends, acquaintances, and relatives I often discuss political subjects such as economic issues, social affairs and “the global-warming threat” (within quotation marks because I think it’s all a big bluff). It’s interesting and intellectually stimulating. But we’re never discussing the “religion of peace” and its influence in Europe. And when I listen to Hedegaard I think perhaps we should, since many intellectuals in the US do.

I’ve never seen one single review of either America Alone or Londonistan or While Europe slept or Infidel in the Swedish MSM. I have to go abroad on the internet for reviews. And, as far as I know, not one of them has been translated to Swedish. We have to go abroad to read criticism and news on the “culture-collision”, except for the “blogosphere” were we can read criticism on everything each day.

The silliest example of this was when Fox News reported about how a Palestinian doctor in Blekinge, Sweden refused to give medical care to an American woman in need of treatment because of one very reason; she was an American and since the doctor didn’t like the American foreign policy he didn’t give her treatment. But it wasn’t the fact that Fox reported it that was silly; it was the fact that Swedish MSM totally ignored it! Only one of the local papers, Blekinge Läns Tidning, wrote a shorter article about it, and one — one!! — Swedish newspaper, Södermanlands Nyheter, gave it attention in its editorial section. Bad work, journalists (except from BLT, Södermanlands Nyheter and Fox News)! That’s how silly the debate in Sweden is, and when Fox reported it in prime time, and meanwhile the Swedish MSM ignored it, then it became obvious to me: Sweden is sick, sick with political correctness.

What we need is a new enlightenment, Voltaire-style!

Photo credits: Steen of Snaphanen.

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.

I recently read the book The Reformation by Owen Chadwick, about the Protestant Reformation and the situation in 15th and 16th century Europe. It is fascinating to read about Western Europe during a period when it was genuinely dynamic, not the anemic and self-loathing continent it is now. But still, I was also struck by how many similarities there are between the situation then and now. This was also during a period of Muslim aggression, as the Turks made inroads into the Balkans and Central Europe, eventually threatening even Western Europe.

Ironically, this period was also when the Greco-Roman heritage was rediscovered in the West. The classical heritage had been preserved in the East for a thousand years after the Western half of the Roman Empire collapsed, and with the pressures from Muslims, many Greek Byzantine scholars brought their texts with them to northern Italian cities such as Venice, thus fuelling the Renaissance.

However, the overall picture was one of Western division. Spain, which was probably the strongest nation in Europe during the 16th century, after expelling Muslims from their own peninsula in 1492, was more interested in looking westwards to the Americas rather than eastwards to the expanding Ottoman Empire.

The French even allied with the Muslims for their own short-term gains. According to Chadwick, “the French king had not hesitated to attempt alliance with the Turks when it suited his political need, and once allowed a Turkish admiral to celebrate the fast of Ramadan in the streets of Toulon.” In general, “the European powers were more frightened of each other than of the Turk.”

This was during the Second Jihad against the West. Now similar divisions are occurring during the Third Jihad. Not necessarily between countries, but between various cultural and ideological groups within the West.

It is especially interesting to see how the fall of Constantinople in 1453 affected the other Eastern churches, in particular in the rising Russian state which viewed itself as the successor of the Roman and Byzantine Empires. According to Chadwick, page 360-61:
– – – – – – – – – –

The Russians always looked to Constantinople, received their faith from the south, felt themselves to participate in Christendom by means of their Slavonic Orthodoxy. By 1505 Russia had been created by Ivan III the Great out of the little principalities of the great plains. He married Sophia, the niece of the last Roman Emperor of Constantinople, and looked upon himself as the heir to the Christian heritage of East Rome. He took for the Russian arms the double-headed eagle of the Byzantines. These notions were powerful in the formation of Russian tradition and autocracy. We find a monk named Philotheos writing to the Tsar between 1505 and 1533: ‘Two Romes have now fallen, and the third one, our Moscow, yet standeth; and a fourth one there shall never be…..In all the world thou alone art the Christian Tsar.’

This relationship can be detected clearly in art. Russian religious icons, as well as those in other Orthodox countries such as Bulgaria, have been strongly influenced by Byzantine art. Muslims in Russia are very much aware of this historic connection, which is why a group of top Muslim clerics in 2005 demanded that Orthodox Christian symbols should be removed from the Russian coat of arms.

People from Russia, a country which was once under the Tatar Yoke, should understand the Islamic threat. So why are the Russians helping The Islamic Republic of Iran with missile and nuclear technology that will eventually be used to intimidate non-Muslim countries?

In early 2007, during a meeting with the Russian foreign minister in Tehran, Iran’s supreme leader Ali Khamenei was reported as calling for a cooperation between the two countries to halt US ambitions in the region. In 2005, President Vladimir Putin stated that Russia is the Islamic world’s most reliable partner.

Are the Russians so naive that they believe this beast won’t eventually come back to bite them, too? Iran has been secretly training Chechen Muslim rebels in sophisticated terror techniques to enable them to carry out more effective attacks against Russian forces, the Sunday Telegraph has revealed.

Russia’s relationship with the West has always been complicated. As writer Alexander Boot, himself a Russian by birth, states, Russia is only partially Western and has never gone through some of the determining periods of the modern West, the Renaissance, the Reformation and the Enlightenment. The country’s culture is a complex mix of Western, non-Western and a few anti-Western impulses. According to Boot, author Fyodor Dostoyevsky “sensed that Russia was irreconcilable with the Catholic West, which is why he believed that destroying the West was the holy mission of Russian Orthodoxy.”

Some of the Russian skepticism towards the West is understandable. As long as Western nations pander to Muslims, why shouldn’t the Russians do so, too? The reaction of European Union officials to the grotesque Islamic Beslan massacre of Russian school children — all but blaming it on the Russian security forces instead of the Islamic terrorists — rightly upset many Russians.

As Jihad Watch Board Vice President Hugh Fitzgerald notes, the American bombing of the Orthodox Serbs to aid Muslim Albanians was seen as an attack on a historic ally of Russia. He thinks the West should be proving to the Russian public that we are on the side of the Serbs, not the Muslims. We should ask them to do the same with Iran: “Russians want a task equal to their putative power, and what they see as their rightful place in the world. Helping the Old World come to its senses about Islam is such a worthy task. They might just consider it.”

Perhaps the Russians should study more closely what happened to the Byzantines. In his book The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades), Robert Spencer discusses the sad case of the Byzantine Emperor John VI Cantacuzenes, who invited the Ottoman Turks into Europe to help him win a dynastic dispute. His invited guests overthrew his Empire about 100 years later, and have stayed in Europe to this day.

Islam was controlled in the Soviet Union but has had a renaissance since its downfall in 1991, helped by oil money from the Middle East. This re-Islamization of Central Asia should worry the Russians. They are spending hundreds of millions of dollars on a border security project, partly to avoid being demographically overwhelmed by Muslims. But Russia, too, has a large and growing Muslim population, and a non-Muslim population in marked decline. It is not impossible, if current trends continue, that Russia could either disintegrate completely or be majority Muslim within this century. Russia’s non-Muslim population is declining, but numbers are rising in Muslim regions. Will the country called Russia still exist in the future? And if so, will it be the Russia of Pushkin or of Abdullah?

It is understandable that the Russians have Great Power ambitions of their own. However, one would hope that they will wake up, remember their history and realize that there are worse threats out there than American power.

Some of them do. Elena Chudinova, the author of the dystopian novel The Mosque of Notre Dame de Paris, says that if the Muslims were to succeed in establishing their own rule in Moscow, then Russian culture, Russians as a people and Russia itself would cease to exist. And because that danger is not unthinkable, she is calling for a struggle against the Islamic threat to the Christian world.

After Constantinople, the Second Rome and the last remaining vestige of the Roman Empire, was overrun by Muslims in the 15th century, Moscow became the Third Rome. Will the Third Rome fall to Muslims in the 21st century, just as the Second Rome did in the 15th? Or will the Russian people rise to the occasion and defeat the threat, as they have done in the past?

CP has an exclusive story about a raid last week on a counterfeit goods scam that involved people Virginia, West Virginia, Delaware, and New York. According to CP’s sources, several of those arrested are members of the Muslims of America, the cover organization for the terrorist group Jamaat ul-Fuqra:

According to my sources, at least some of the individuals who were arrested are believed to be members of the Muslims of the Americas, an Islamist organization operating throughout the US and founded by a Pakistani named Sheikh Mubarik Ali Gilani. The organization is made up of mostly religious followers, but serves as a front organization for the activities of a covert militant group known as Jamaat ul-Fuqra. The organization is partly funded via tribute from MOA members. Most members are generally required to send a percentage of their income, which may be gained through legal or, in a number of cases illegal means, to the sheikh in Pakistan. Research indicates the suspected MOA members in this ring may include:

> Ronald Roundtree of Lynchburg who, according to a source, is aka Muhammad Talib and has a history of drug abuse. News reports say he operated a booth outside the Z Market in Lynchburg selling some of the bootlegged items. Authorities searched not only the Z Market, but also Roundtree’s home at 11th and Polk Streets in Lynchburg, although research indicates he has been a previous resident at the MOA compound in Red House, VA. An additional address history search links him to several other Virginia locales as well as Williamsport, PA and California, both areas where MOA has previously operated.

– – – – – – – – – –
CP has much more information, including news videos and official documents. Go over to the Politics of CP to read the whole thing.

I notice that one of the alleged counterfeiters was arrested in Meherrin, which is in Prince Edward County, and another was busted in Pamplin, a tiny hamlet in the northeast corner of Charlotte County. Not to mention the alleged former resident of Sheikh Gilani Lane in Red House.

Remember Sheikh Gilani Lane? It’s the road through the Jamaat ul-Fuqra compound, the name of which was recently and notoriously affirmed by the Charlotte County Board of Supervisors.

Anyone want to drop Averett Jones a line and let him know about this?

Do you think he’d think it’s news?

There are lots of examples of the color/race/ethnic identity problem in the press when it comes to stating facts about the criminal class. It’s expected by now: if they don’t name a color, the perp is probably a minority. Thus, you can read between the coy lines of the report to figure out the real story.

These p.c. rules about reporting crimes committed by persons of color can be violated in certain cases – e.g., if the criminal is white. Saying that out loud is merely a venial sin and will pass unnoticed by the race hawks. But if the serial rapist currently rampaging through various neighborhoods is black, you’ll have to look out for yourself, because the MSM won’t give you enough information to go on.

There are ways of getting around this. For example, if you have the name of the malefactor, and it’s something obvious, like Martinez, you can guess his ethnicity at least. Or, in the case of the latest baby-snatching in New Mexico, the first name of the woman being held is Rayshaun. Three guesses.

But what happens when there is no name and the police limit the suspect’s description to his size and clothing? Good luck identifying him. Of course, if his clothing list mentions “do rag” you have a good clue there, too.

John Leo fisked this problem recently in City Journal, in his essay, Sins of Omission:

A current example is the so-called “second rape case in Durham,” an eerie mirror image of the Duke lacrosse case: here the suspect is black and the alleged victim is white. North Carolina’s News & Observer described the suspect as “in his late teens or early 20s, about 6 feet 1 and wearing a do-rag, a gray sweatshirt and blue jeans.” That’s word-for-word from the police description, except that the police said that the suspect was black. The newspaper deleted the reference. It also couldn’t bring itself to mention that the attack allegedly took place at an African-American fraternity at Duke.

Notice he says the police did say the suspect as black, even though that bit disappeared from the media description.

But such bluntness by the police can raise the roof, too.

– – – – – – – – – –
A few years back, in Li’l Kumquat the university community and the professionally hypersensitive African American community got together to holler about their deep outrage at the police department’s handling of a serial rapist’s story. Those insensitive officers had dared to say that the man had been identified by his victims as being…well, dark-complected. By the time the Hypersensitive were finished with the police department, everyone there was eating humble pie, at least publicly. I think they also got in hot water for suggesting that given the rapidly increasing number of victims, perhaps known sexual offenders in Li’l Kumquat who were of the African American persuasion ought to have DNA screenings for possible matches.

The only match that came out of that common sense suggestion was the one the pee cee community used to light a media conflagration about the insensitive pigs.

John Leo has another cute example:

Sometimes news stories omit important religious and political identifications, too. In Nashville last week, readers of the Tennessean were probably able to deduce the religious affiliation of a cabbie who tried to run over two Christian students after a heated discussion of religion. His name: Ibrahim Sheikh Ahmed. The paper reported: “Metro police spokeswoman Kris Mumford said one of the students is Catholic and the other is Lutheran. Mumford said that Ahmed’s religion was not known.” Maybe so, but many readers probably wondered: if the driver had been a conservative Christian trying to run down a Muslim, wouldn’t the newsroom have summoned the energy to find out, and to confront Pat Robertson or Jerry Falwell on the evils of Islamophobia?

You’re darn right they would have found the “necessary energy.” And after they produced their factoids, they’d have been patting one another on the back for their edgy, head-of-the-class reporting.

The MSM: definitely your grandfather’s news source. At least if said ancestor is still stuck on Edward R. Murrow and is in day care for his Alzheimer’s. Let us stand for a moment of silence for the cracked crock that Walter Cronkite and Co. eventually became.

These people are in a time warp, an endless loop of 1974. They have become embarrassing to read or to hear, like watching someone make a fool of himself in front of God and everybody while the onlookers know the performers haven’t a clue about how asinine they look.

On Saturday Lars Hedegaard presented Daniel Pipes with the Danish Free Press Society’s 2007 Trykkefrihedsprisen (Free Press Award) at the Copenhagen Workers’ Museum. Afterwards Dr. Pipes gave a speech to the assembled crowd.

The blogger KGS of Tundra Tabloids was present at the event, and has a full account here. He went to the social gathering at Steen’s apartment later that evening, at which several Gates of Vienna correspondents were also present. Everyone reports that it was a delightful occasion.

Steen has his own account at Snaphanen. It’s in Danish, but has excellent photos.

Update: Steen has a new post with a link to a 31-minute video of the event. It features both Lars Hedegaard and Daniel Pipes, and is in English.

[Nothing follows]

In his 1968 novel Damnation Alley, Roger Zelazny depicted a post-apocalyptic future in which the heartland of America has been turned into an anarchic and radioactive wasteland, leaving only isolated enclaves of civilization on the east and west coasts. The protagonist of the book is Hell Tanner, the last living Hell’s Angel, who has been pardoned for all his crimes in return for attempting the suicidal task of carrying anti-plague serum overland from California to Boston.

Most authors who write hip science fiction live in the effete urban enclaves themselves. It’s hard for them to imagine the vast “flyover country” that separates the coasts of the United States as anything other than a benighted hinterland, full of inbred illiterates, crazed vigilantes, and Christian fanatics, all ready to descend into violent chaos at the slightest provocation. Visualize a combination of Deliverance and Heart of Darkness, and you’ve got the idea.

In the real world, however, the War of All Against All doesn’t emerge from the agricultural countryside; it arises in the heart of civilization itself, in the decayed blight of the West’s largest cities.

Take France, for example. Certain suburbs of Paris and other major cities are notorious as “no-go zones” for the police and other agents of central authority. In these areas “youths” run rampant, terrorizing the inhabitants and anyone from the outside who is foolish enough to enter.

And these aren’t just any “youths”; they are the lawless and disaffected children and grandchildren of Islamic immigrants. With their ghetto gear and their teenage smirks, they have become the poster children for the anomie of the Islamic diaspora.

The French, in typical fashion, have evolved a classificatory system to deal with their youthful crisis, and it even has its own nomenclature. Daniel Pipes describes it:

They go by the euphemistic term Zones Urbaines Sensibles, or Sensitive Urban Zones, with the even more antiseptic acronym ZUS, and there are 751 of them as of last count. They are conveniently listed on one long webpage, complete with street demarcations and map delineations.

What are they? Those places in France that the French state does not control. They range from two zones in the medieval town of Carcassone to twelve in the heavily Muslim town of Marseilles, with hardly a town in France lacking in its ZUS. The ZUS came into existence in late 1996 and according to a 2004 estimate, nearly 5 million people live in them.

Comment: A more precise name for these zones would be Dar al-Islam, the place where Muslims rule.

French authorities have chosen not to deal with the problem as an existential crisis, or as a clash of cultures, or even as a law enforcement issue. They reckon it to be a bureaucratic problem, and with predictable Gallic intricacy they have adopted a bureaucratic solution.

First there is the official definition:

The sensitive urban zones (ZUS) are infra-urban areas defined by the authorities to be a high-priority target for city policy, taking into consideration local circumstances related to the problems which the inhabitants of these areas have. The law of November 14, 1996 implementing a revived policy for the city distinguishes three levels of intervention:

• sensitive urban zones (ZUS);
• zones of urban renewal (ZRU);
• urban tax-free zones (ZFU).

The three levels of intervention ZUS, ZRU and ZFU, characterized by fiscal and social measures of increasing importance, target with differing degrees of response the difficulties encountered in these districts.

The tax-free areas (franche) are similar to our Urban Enterprise Zones: decayed city areas, but deemed by the authorities as redeemable, as areas where it is still possible for favored government cronies to turn a profit.

The ZRU seem to resemble standard “urban renewal” areas: bulldoze the old slums and put up some nice new slums, with lots of fresh concrete and hardened public fixtures.

As for the last of these three categories of dysfunction, the phrase Zones Urbaines Sensibles — “Sensitive Urban Zones” — designates the most intractable areas, where the rule of law has vanished and a normal economy no longer functions. They are, as “20 Minutes” noted in June of 2006, not always confined to the suburban high-rises, but extend to the heart of the city:
– – – – – – – – – –

Contrary to generally accepted ideas, these sensitive districts are today in the middle of urban concentrations and not just at the periphery.

Since the 1996 law was passed, additional layers of bureaucratic accretion have been deposited over the original structure. The government has even established an official observatory of the ZUS, as if they were distant constellations glimpsed through a telescope:

The situation in the areas in difficulty was until recently difficult to evaluate with precision, based on many statistics which remain in some way inadequate in certain areas, scattered or often badly collected. It was in order to remedy these problems, and to measure more accurately the effect of policy implementation, that the national Observatory of the sensitive urban Zones (ZUS) was created by the law passed on August 1, 2003.

Some of the fruits of all this observation are elaborate official taxonomies with carefully delineated demarcations, street-by-street analyses, and a census of the affected citoyens. According to Les Echos atlas:

Nearly 5 million inhabitants reside in zones in difficulty

The cumulative problems of the sensitive urban zones: an excess of public housing and few owners, high unemployment, a low proportion of high school graduates.

The law of November 14, 1996 created at that time the sensitive urban zones (ZUS) and the urban tax-free zones (ZFU). Thus, 752 zones were created in France, including 718 in Metropolitan France. These ZUS are distributed throughout 490 communes and include 4.7 million inhabitants. Among them, a subset of 416 zones of urban renewal (ZRU) was created, including 396 in the metropolis. The ZRU present particular difficulties and contain 3.2 million inhabitants. Almost all of the departments are affected, the exceptions being nine departments with a strong agricultural character.

You can read through all these acres of virtual bureaucratic bumf without a hint of the gritty reality showing through. The ZUS represent the perpetually inflamed tissue of the French body politic, with the nightly count of burned vehicles showing up as one of the green squiggles on the vital-signs monitor. Two hundred burned cars, and the youthful patient is having a good day. Five hundred, and the nurse is called to administer a sedative.

But it’s not the patient who goes to sleep; it’s the French public. Everyone is aware of what’s happening, but the magnitude of the crisis and the specifics of the situation are hidden behind a wall of official obfuscation and government-mandated censorship.

Within the ZUS, the gangs of Muslim youths have a free hand to loot, rape, and burn. Police are not allowed to use their weapons to enforce the law, or even to defend themselves. Trying to do his traditional job can put a policemen’s career in jeopardy, as the officers who chased two young criminals into a power substation back in October 1995 discovered.

What is not acknowledged is that France has lost sovereign control over large swathes of its urban territory. The only solution envisioned by French bureaucrats is a quintessentially bureaucratic one. The layers of jargon and classification and commissions and acronyms are like the wall of scar tissue that forms around a foreign substance that can’t be assimilated.

The areas designated as ZUS are effectively acknowledged to be dead. They are no longer part of France. They no longer possess any of the functions of a civitas.

They are the scattered pieces of la France Morte.

Hat tip: Commenter merrimacshores.

All of the original French in the above material was translated by me. Readers with better French than mine are invited to correct me if I have departed from the sense of the original.

LN, one of our regular readers from Sweden, tipped us to a post on Snaphanen about a Danish pop star named Zaki Youssef.

LN has translated parts of Steen’s post for us. It’s not clear if Steen is quoting, paraphrasing, or parodying salaam.dk, but here his introduction to Zaki:

Zaki, a musician in a globalized world, is the provocative new kid on the block. The guy who writes songs so clear and spits them out so loud that his tribute to an album project in Denmark, sending the message of being open-minded and tolerant, was censored!

Zaki is half Egyptian, half Danish, born Muslim, and one of the most recognized producers and minds behind many music projects in Denmark and in Egypt as well.

And here are the lyrics from part of his song “Det tragisk” (“It’s Tragic”):

Mine is not the problem that your culture is uninviting
Even if I lived as if it was altogether mine
and ate pork and drank wine
Danish culture would still not be mine
My way of life is Islam and I am Muslim
and my passion is all too big for this damn country,
that’s why I write rhymes
It is so f***ing cold in the west and I do not sell my honor
There are heaps of good things I want to learn
But Danish I have never been and cannot become

– – – – – – – – – –
LN adds this afterword:

Zaki Youssef is indirectly supported (through salaam.dk ) by the Danish Ministry of Education, the Danish Daily Newspaper Politiken and the Danish municipalities of Fredriksberg and Ishöj.

He’s darn right it’s f***ing cold in Denmark. It’s cold enough to freeze the gonads off a brass Egyptian monkey. But that doesn’t mean Zaki will be returning anytime soon to his sunny ancestral home.

No, life among the Danes is too sweet. All those adoring kaffir fans, and the rave reviews in Politiken, and the groupies, and the fast life…

It’s money for nothing, and the infidel whores are free.

Via Larwyn, Tigerhawk has a post detailing the latest shenanigans on the Hill.

Basically, it boils down to this: if the president wants funding for the continuing war effort, then he’d better be prepared to sign off on a pork-stuffed fat boy full of prizes for peanut farmers and spinach growers and New Orleans — just to name a few of the beneficiaries of the Democrats’ largesse revenge.

• There is drought relief and hurricane relief.
• There are veterans’ allotments.
• And let us not forget the Eternal Victim, New Orleans. Will it ever stand on its own two feet again? (That’s a rhetorical question) We ought to be done with it and simply re-name the place: “Little D.C.” One thing is for sure: Nawlins is certainly not a free-standing town anymore and probably never will be. From now on the corruption will no longer be merely a local phenomenon. The place in covered in greenbacks — so much for the mayor’s “chocolate” town. It’s a green city, covered in mold and money and resentful envy.

There are already twenty billions in pork add-ons and somehow I don’t think they’re finished yet.

Want more money for Iraq, Mr. Bush? Better be prepared to swallow the Senate fast-food, too. Pork barbecue with that Senatorial special sauce, sir.

Open wide. Yum! Now that wasn’t so bad, was it?

[Nothing follows]

Yorkshireminer, my emails to you keep bouncing!

Please drop me a line using an email address that will actually accept my reply.

Daniel Pipes has arrived in Copenhagen to accept the “Press Freedom Award” from Trykkefrihedsselskabet.

Steen has a twenty-minute video of Dr. Pipes speaking to Danish Jews about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The footage is very dark, because Steen didn’t want to put bright lights into his visitor’s eyes, but the sound is clear. I’ve rescued a few stills from the darkness to post here.

Steen’s account of the visit, “Daniel Pipes møder danske jøder”, is up at Snaphanen, but it’s in Danish. The talk itself is in English.

A quote:

“Either Israel will give up, and say, ‘Zionism was a nice idea, but it lost’; [that is] either there is no Israel, or there is, in effect an Israel that is really Palestine; there is no longer a Jewish state — or — the enemies of Israel, the Arabs in particular, will accept Israel, and say, ‘We don’t like it; we wish it weren’t there, but it’s there.’ In other words, either Israel ceases to exist, and the Arabs win, or Israel is accepted by the Arabs, and it is no longer at war.Those are the key elements. Those are the true possible outcomes. Compromise and mediation have proven to be a failure.”

[Nothing follows]

One of the axioms of teaching is that one should wait for right moment to make an important point — that is, you choose the “teachable moment” to get across an important, emotionally- laden or difficult concept. Otherwise, it turns into a lecture. It’s an old idea; after all, Socrates used it. But now it’s been gussied up in this new term.

Yesterday, I was talking to a teenager who is having a hard time in his school in Li’l Kumquat. Some of it is the environment of the school itself — too large, too burdened with bureaucratic impositions (federal, state, and local) — and some of the problem is the child’s poor choices. When both factors are involved, the kid can end up in a bureaucratic grinder of detentions, reprimands, etc. which begins to resemble one of Dante’s infernal circles.

In the case of his latest detention, I’d already talked to his teacher, so I knew the story from the point of view of the frustrated adult. The only surprise there was how utterly clueless any of the teachers or administrators were about the child’s home life. It’s amazing that a child can be acting like this one has, and no one — NOT ONE PERSON — had inquired about things at home in the two years he’s been there. Also amazing — and discouraging — was the fact that it has taken me seven months and a large crowbar to get his guidance counselor to return a single phone call.

Anyway, with the teacher’s frustration in mind, I tried to figure out how to segue into some conversation with this boy about the possible motivations for his behavior (you never ask a kid “why” he did something. He hasn’t a clue). So we began circling the issue, talking about what had worked for him and what hadn’t. I brought up the word “motivation” and explained I was asking what the payoff was for him: what did he think he got out of making outrageous statements that disrupted the class? A disruption so thorough that the only way to restore order was to send him — once again — down to the principal’s office. I mentioned two possible scenarios I’d thought of: that either he disliked the teacher and was out to show him he couldn’t tell this boy what to do, or that being the class clown was a good way to impress his friends. However, I said there might be other reasons.

He admitted he’d enjoyed being the class clown, and that he was playing to his audience. He liked this teacher and didn’t want to cause him trouble, but impressing his friends with his brazen behavior had become something his classmates expected. Yeah, he knew he’d get detention, but sometimes — and more and more lately — he found it hard to resist the temptation to blurt something out of the blue to draw attention to himself and gain an audience.

As we were talking, the local TV station was running a news clip on a demonstration that had happened in town at our local congressional representative’s office. I suggested we watch the story and see what happened. It was a stereotypical “peace” demonstration of about a dozen people, complete with recycled anti-war songs and arrests and an excitable anchorman trying to build at least a modest mound out of a very small anthill. See for yourself — part of the film we watched is here.

I asked the teenager if he could see the point of the protest. He said, “Yeah, they don’t like the war and they want us to get out of Iraq.” I gave him an A for paying close attention and then pointed out to him the fact that their demonstration would do nothing to help their cause. I explained that the Congressman for this district, Virgil Goode, was widely admired except by voters in Li’l Kumquat. They’d been trying to get him out of office for years.

Then I gave my friend a little background on Goode’s politics — that he switched from being a Democrat to being a Republican (I had to explain those, too). I didn’t have a map of the Fifth District, but I told him about the people in it: the university people in Li’l Kumquat versus the country people in the largely rural areas in the rest of the district. The fact that he knew his own dad thought of himself as a country person piqued his interest.

Li’l Kumquat hates Virgil Goode, and has been trying to get him out of office for years — even though he was a graduate of the University of Virginia Law School and was very smart, he didn’t agree with what they wanted or believed.Rep. Goode, I said, believed in supporting the troops and in protecting the border between the US and Mexico… something else Li’l Kumquat doesn’t like.

I asked him to look at what the demonstrators were doing; reminding him that Congressman Goode was probably in Washington, and that the demonstrators had known he would not be there. They were free to demonstrate if they had gotten a permit to do so, but they had broken the law by refusing to leave his office when it was time for the secretary to close for the day.

Then I pointed out that the TV cameras weren’t there because they happened to wander by and see what was going on. Instead, the leader of the demonstrators had called ahead and requested that this TV station show up and cover the story.

“So it’s not real news?” he asked.

I congratulated him for his observation, and said that much of what passes for “news” on TV is not real, but manufactured, like this story.

“Then how do you know what’s true?” he asked.
– – – – – – – – – –
“Well,” I said, “you’ve just figured out in two minutes the question some grown ups never even think to ask.”

We continued to watch this bit of “news” all the way through. My teenage friend commented on how excited the TV anchor person seemed. I asked him what he thought of it.

“Dumb,” he said.

“Why?” I asked.

“Because a couple of people holding signs and singing and getting arrested wasn’t going to change anything. The war is going to go on anyway.”

“So,” I asked, “do you think they might have done it to get on TV and impress their friends? Don’t they look brave being led away by the police? I mean, it’s kind of cool to see the old lady in handcuffs, grinning.”

He snorted. “I get in trouble for grinning when I’m scared. Grown-ups think I’m not serious. She’s just scared and trying not to show it. Look at her. She’s in handcuffs. I’d be grinning, too, but it wouldn’t be fun.”

“Well, I asked, “what do you think they proved by standing up to the man and protesting the war like that? Will they get what they want?”

He thought for a moment. “They didn’t get much,” he said. “But maybe they’re like me: they need to impress their friends even if they end up in jail for it.”

“Hmmm… do you think going to jail will achieve anything beyond impressing their friends?”

“Heck, no,” he said. “Yeah, their friends think will think they’re cool and all, but the war will still be there. If they really want it to end, they ought to think of a better way to end it than by standing around in the cold singing songs.” He snorted, but whether in sympathy or derision, I don’t know.

Nor did I ask. I was just planting a seed, one about short-term behavior and long-term results. I am hoping it will grow into a tree, a tree of wisdom.

Next time he’s tempted to disrupt his class, maybe he’ll recall our conversation. And maybe not. Maybe we need to have a whole lot more conversations.

Guess what? I finally found a use for television! It’s not useful enough to actually have one, but you never can tell what will turn up at someone else’s house.

In searching for the image of yesterday’s (monthly) demonstration in front of Rep. Goode’s office, I came across a tableau we’d encountered last summer. The Baron and I were in Li’l Kumquat attending the art opening of a friend. While there, we saw this group make its slow way down the pedestrian mall — it must be difficult to walk in the late summer heat with a heavy papier maché puppet head covering a third of your body. Evidently their vision was limited as these puppets had to be led along the walkway by others, who held on to them.

The sight was startling — and disturbing. We went back on several other weekends, camera in hand, to capture this picture for the blog, but the puppet heads were never in evidence while we were there.

Of course this moonbat theatre is dated now that Rumsfeld — he with the blood running out of his mouth — is no longer around. I bet they miss using his head. But I’ll also wager that the Department of Defense misses his real head even more.

From time to time I feel the need to thank the people who help make this blog possible.

Over the last year or so Gates of Vienna has gradually become a group effort. After Fjordman came on board our European readership picked up, and people started writing to us from Europe — particularly Scandinavia — with tips, suggestions, and translations of articles from various European media.

This process has snowballed, so that we now have a number of important collaborators. I’ve gathered up as many names as I could find so that I could list them here and acknowledge them.

Even though Dymphna and I are the only listed contributors, several other people submit articles from time to time for us to post.

We also have a lot of translators; through them we receive translations from Danish, Norwegian, Swedish, Finnish, German, and French sources. Their services are invaluable, since some of these pieces would not be published in English if it weren’t for their efforts.

Then there are the researchers, particularly members of the 910 Group. The amount of time they save us with their exertions makes it possible to post on topics that would otherwise go unexamined.

Last, but not least, are the tipsters, most of whom don’t have their own blogs. They are the behind-the-scenes people, the liveried servants carrying urgent messages up and down the backstairs of the blogosphere.

So here’s a roster of some of the people who make Gates of Vienna possible:

Contributors		Translators		Researchers		Tipsters
Apollon Zamp		Borussia		Wally Ballou		Wally Ballou
Bryan Lowe		Eva F-R		Ben		Exile
Fjordman		Exile		Christine		Anders Gravers
Kepiblanc		Fjordman		Kepiblanc		Harry Palmer
LN		Kepiblanc		LN		Kepiblanc
Paula		LN		The Future Baron		Larwyn
Paul Weston		Mr. C				LL
		Phanarath				LN
		Rune				Pierre Ménard
		Sugiero				Tom Pechinski
		XY				Steen
		Zonka				The Future Baron
		JDM				Uncle Pavian

Some people who help us out specifically request that we not name them, even using a pseudonym. But you all know who you are.

Others may have inadvertently been left out. If you belong on one of these lists and your name isn’t there, drop me a line and I’ll insert it in its proper place.

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

Without our ever intending it, Gates of Vienna has become something of a clearinghouse for information about the counterjihad in Europe. Sometimes, for example, a blog in Finland will learn about a particular news story in Norway by reading Gates of Vienna, instead by reading the Finnish media. It’s a peculiar and roundabout way of getting the information out, but we feel privileged to serve that function.

And, except for the modest amount we take in through our tip jar, all of this happens without anybody getting paid for it. All our contributors, translators, researchers, and tipsters are volunteers. We deeply appreciate their dedication.

Please continue to send tips, suggestions, and other material. I can’t promise that we’ll use all of it, or that we’ll even respond to all the messages — that simply isn’t possible anymore — but Dymphna or I will take a look at every email, and we appreciate what you all send.

Thanks for helping us keep watch at the Gates.

I knew I would forget someone… So far, I have added Uncle Pavian (tipster) and JDM (translator). Sorry, guys!

[Nothing follows]

I have written several times about the Danish organization called Stop the Islamification of Denmark, or SIAD.

Denmark is way ahead of the rest of the West in grassroots organizing to counter the encroachment of sharia, and SIAD has just taken its effort a step further to include the rest of the continent: Stop the Islamification of Europe.

SIAD is carrying its message to the very heart of the EU on September 11th. Anders Gravers, the founder and leader of SIAD, recently sent me the following press release:

Demonstration outside the European Parliament

September 11th 2007

Europeans are saying

ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!

NO SHARIA HERE!

So join the call

All European nations must be represented

SO IF YOU LOVE FREEDOM

IF YOU LOVE YOUR COUNTRY

BE THERE!!

The organizers of the demonstration are:
SIAD (Denmark) sioe@siad.dk phone: +45 96771784
No Sharia Here (England) sioe.nsh@btinternet.com

We are in contact with Akte-islam in Germany, which is organizing the German participation.

We seek people/organizations from all other European countries who will organize participation by their own countrymen.

For questions or coordination amongst countries, contact SIAD or No Sharia Here.

STOP THE ISLAMIFICATION OF EUROPE

The Origin of the Group

Stop the Islamification of Europe (SIOE) is an alliance of people from across Europe with the single aim of preventing Islam from becoming a dominant political force in Europe.

It originated with the joining of Stop Islamseringen Af Danmark (SIAD) — a political party dedicated to stopping the Islamification of Denmark — with a loose association of people in England whose rallying cry is “No Sharia Here”, people who want to maintain English law and stop the creeping growth of sharia law in England.

SIOE is growing in Europe with the amalgamation of similarly-minded groups.

Aims

SIOE exists to combat legally the overt and covert expansion of Islam in Europe.

SIOE condemns racism as the lowest form of human stupidity, but considers Islamophobia to be the height of common sense.

SIOE states that Islam and democracy are incompatible, due to teachings within the Koran itself and some of the hadith which comprise sharia law.

SIOE asserts that such incompatibility is self-evident when those tenuous democracies in countries where Islam is the dominant religion are scrutinized.

Such “democracies” have only existed in the post European colonial period, since the end of World War Two.

It has always been the case, but recently increasingly so, that in Islamic countries, whether “democratic” or not, non-Muslims are at best treated as second class citizens, or at worst oppressed.

SIOE believes this to be due to the teachings of Islam, which encourages Muslims to feel superior to non-Muslims, and that Islam must prevail over any other religion and political system, by any means.

SIOE finds the concept of “moderate” Muslims difficult because of the Islamic practices of taqiyya and kitman, which are designed to deceive and mislead non-Muslims in order to promote the ascendance of Islam over any other religion and political system.

Therefore, if a political party’s leaders and members may be accused of lying and their policies challenged, then the same should apply to a religion, especially Islam, which considers lying to be not only acceptable, but obligatory in the furtherance of its doctrine.
– – – – – – – – – –
Furthermore, SIOE wants all religions to be treated in law the same way as political parties, with no special legal protection. This should apply especially to Islam because it is a combined political, legal and judicial system administered and overseen by unelected theologians, and is completely contrary to Western concepts of democracy.

This is why democracy is failing in Islamic countries and giving way to Islamic theocracy.

SIOE considers that those Western politicians, journalists, academics, and social groups who support Islam are deliberately misleading Europeans about the nature of Islam. This is particularly evident in the non-reporting of Islamist atrocities around the world, but also in the re-writing of history to portray Islam in a favorable light as a non-aggressive religion.

SIOE reflects the attitude of most people in Europe that Islam is being favored above indigenous European cultures and that Muslims are being selectively protected by politicians and lawyers at the expense of non-Muslims who often find themselves unprotected.

SIOE challenges the funding by Saudi Arabia for the building of mosques and other Islamic institutions in Europe and elsewhere around the world, when that country itself outlaws any religion other than Islam, any politics other than Islam, and any jurisprudence other than Islam. Such asymmetric funding must be stopped.

No more mosques until we see churches in Mecca.

REASONS

To Maintain Our Hard-Fought Democracy

“ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!” is the rallying cry of all liberty-loving Europeans who are tired of seeing their values and ways of life eroded.

More than any other continent, Europe has arguably suffered most to achieve its present happy condition of liberal democracy.

Centuries of international conflicts and civil wars, most notably of course the two world wars of the 20th century, were endured by the ordinary folk of Europe.

However, conflict, strife and warfare are not the sole preserve of Europe. The USA suffered its own civil war; China and Russia are still staggering out of the rubble of revolution and down the rocky road to democracy.

Out of the centuries of Europe’s internal strife blossomed the Renaissance and Enlightenment, which in turn bore the fruits of democracy.

Freethinking men and women fashioned this fragile, imperfect political system, with its many nuances, which nevertheless survives and grows because of its intrinsic fairness and popularity.

Democracy in turn released those lucky people enjoying its benefits to form the most medically, scientifically and artistically productive part of the world, that which we call “The West”.

Many of the West’s achievements occurred during the period since the Second World War, when its people determinedly defended their hard earned principles of democracy and freedom against the totalitarian doctrine of Communism.

In winning both World War Two and the Cold War, the West defeated two of its greatest enemies, one the European cancer of Nazism, the second the contagion of Communism.

Unfortunately, the existence of both has led to the adoption in modern political parlance of the fatuous terms “left” and “right.”

Even more unfortunately, in Europe at least, “left” has misleadingly come to mean “good” and “right” to mean “bad”.

The table of political oppression is a round one, at which the power-ravenous “right” and “left” sit shoulder-to-shoulder, gnawing the bones of freedom’s cadaver.

Rational people know these truths.

Totalitarianism is the antithesis of liberty.

Theocracy is the antipathy of democracy.

Our Own Politicians, Police and Judges Are The Danger

So why have rational people allowed irrationality to rule?

It is because the main danger to liberal democracy is its inherent liberalism, which opens itself to being hijacked by self-styled liberals.

A Nazi will punch you for the good of the state. A Communist will kick you for the good of the state. A liberal will do both while shaking your hand and telling you it’s for your own good.

Rational people recognize that the only liberality self-styled “liberals” indulge in, is liberally banning everything they disagree with.

Lamentably, at the top of the agenda is banning free speech.

Understandably, because of the events of World War Two and also our colonial past, Europeans have become wary of persecuting minority groups.

This has led to Europeans encouraging people from around the world to settle in Europe and to share the benefits of Western ideals.

However, this laudable intention has been usurped, not only by some of the groups of people coming to Europe, but worse still by self-loathing, guilt-laden politicians not only of the “liberal” persuasion, but also capitalist free-marketeers.

Such people have insinuated themselves into positions of power.

Together they undermine our ways of life, stifle any dissent from their diktats, and spread feelings of political remoteness and hopelessness among the majority of European people.

This is exactly the kind of totalitarianism we fought against in World War Two and the Cold War.

So What’s the Difference?

So what is different about the present battle, which some describe as a war?

This time around the struggle is against a theocratic totalitarianism called Islam.

The very fact that it is a theocracy, in other words a religion, protects Islam from being challenged.

Political constitutions (written or otherwise) across the West enshrine the principle of freedom of religious practice.

Therefore, religions may not be attacked in the same way as political parties.

In the West, politicians and their parties come under continuous verbal and written onslaughts in the media regarding their policies, performance and personnel.

Religious practice, however, is protected.

Despite this, Christianity, Europe’s main religion, has constantly been ridiculed, criticized and condemned, more often than not with impunity.

This is because Christianity is an easy target, mainly due to the fact that calling for Christian heretics to be killed is deemed more than unacceptable by Christian clergy, and actually killing heretics contravenes laws drawn up by democratically elected legislators.

Certainly leaving Christianity, or any other religion besides Islam, does not merit any punishment, in this world at least.

As we all know, this is not the case with Islam’s sharia law, which stipulates a death sentence for apostates leaving Islam for any reason.

Until recently, religion has been kept in its place in Western society. It has become a matter of one’s own personal belief and private conscience.

For generations, offending a religious person has been regarded as no more than bad manners. One of the fundamental benefits in the West is the right to offend and be offended.

Religion has not been a threat to society and the clergy has not formulated legislation in the West, although it has been allowed to lobby the various elected governments.

All this is changing due to the imposition of Islam.

No other religion demands more from those who do not adhere to its doctrine.

This would not be a problem in the West, if our leaders actually stood up for Western values and insisted that Muslims live within our laws and accepted our cultures and social systems.

Instead, it is we who are told we must abandon our values, cultures and societies in order not to offend Muslims. It is Islam that is being rammed down our throats and the throats of our children.

It is not only in the West that Islam is causing misery and mayhem. All around the world Islam is battling the “infidels”.

In response, all our politicians, journalists, social commentators and religious leaders do is avoid mentioning the murderous activities in places like Indonesia, Thailand and sub-Saharan Africa. However, if an Israeli soldiers so much as farts within earshot of a Palestinian mosque the whole world knows about it within minutes and politicians resoundingly condemn Israel.

Such sanctimonious, selective conscience is contemptible and Europeans are fed up with being oppressed for the sake of what most believe to be the most corrosive and intolerant political system ever devised.

ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!