In show business they say that any publicity is good publicity.

So I guess we should be happy that the MSM has finally mentioned Vigilant Freedom, even though we’re described in the news article in question as the international allies of an armed “extreme right network”.

And in the Danish press, no less! Denmark is first in everything.

You all know by now that the policies of Vigilant Freedom (pdf format) specifically and explicitly disavow violence as a means of attaining our goals.

But now it appears that the article, which describes a demonstration scheduled for this Saturday by SIAD and its affiliated groups, is in fact a smear job by a lefty Danish journalist. I contacted Anders Gravers, the chairman of SIAD, and he had this to say about the story:

It is a terrible lying story from one end to the other. I was called by the journalist about our demonstration this Saturday in Aalborg. He asked about what “anti-jihad” is. I said the Muslims made jihad, and we will make anti-jihad. Non-violent, of course. I mentioned that three times to the journalist!

Then he read on our webpage that we had a meeting with some foreigners, and asked if we worked together with them. I said, SIAD does. Not Anti-Jihad Denmark. And I didn’t mention Vigilant Freedom

And then it was a complete shock to see that he didn’t write what I had said, but talked about armed violence and the extreme right wing instead.

There is someone in one of the other groups who talked about self-defense after SIAD was attacked in January; that was the chairman of Frit Danmark. But what he is talking about is an airgun, which is legal in Denmark.

And the journalist himself remarked that he had been in jail for throwing paint on our Prime Minister and Foreign Minister. He was angry that Denmark participated in the war in Iraq and then he attacked our ministers and shouted: “There’s blood on your hands!” He got four months in jail.

All this time he was talking to me — and he’s a far left journalist, who has attacked our Prime Minister and Foreign Minister with paint!

We have just written a letter to his editor and complained about him. We want a dementi (retraction), and an apology of course. He had made up the whole story before he phoned me, that is now obvious to see.

The Center for Vigilant Freedom is also sending a letter to the editor demanding a retraction.

This article, like so many others put out by the MSM, is nothing but an attempt to portray non-violent criticism of Islam as violent, in an attempt to incite violence against any groups that stand up for the Danish constitution.

Here’s the entire piece from today’s Avisen.dk. Thanks to Steen for the tip, and let’s give an especially big Gates of Vienna thank-you to Phanarath, who translated the article with astonishing rapidity, and on very short notice:

Armed network wants to stop Islam in Denmark

With loaded guns and support from abroad a newly founded extreme right network wants to set the agenda in the debate about immigration.

Danish Muslims have a new enemy.

This Saturday the network “Anti-Jihad Danmark’ will hit the streets in a demonstration for “more freedom for citizens – less control by gangs”. The initiative is meant to make the debate about immigration the point.

– – – – – – – – – –

International contact

“Criminal immigrants must be kept behind bars, have their citizenship removed and be sent out of the country,” said Anders Gravers, spokesman for the network, about the reason for the demonstration.

The spokesman is also the chairman of the group Stop Islamiseringen Af Danmark [Stop the Islamization of Denmark] which was earlier subject to a ban against demonstrating for fear of trouble.

Now he has joined forces with a number of controversial groups on the far right, and he has made contacts with the international organization “Vigilant Freedom”. This organization gives support to Islam-critical movements all over the world and was recently involved in founding a Scandinavian section of this anti-jihad movement.

In ‘Anti-Jihad Danmark’ among others, is the former chairman of Dansk Front [Danish Front], Julius Børgesen, and his new group Frie Danske Nationalister [free Danish Nationalists]. Earlier this year Julius Børgesen was convicted and sentenced to month in jail for illegal possession of arms and for encouraging the burning of the home of the minister of internal affairs.

With weapons in hand

In this new network weapons will hardly be seen as a problem, since one of the main forces behind it is Frit Danmark [A Free Denmark], which directly encourages its members to carry arms in the fight for the fatherland.

“We bring loaded guns to our meetings, but there is nothing illegal in that. However, we will not bring them on Saturday,” insists Frit Danmark’s chairman, Michael Ellegaard.

The North Jutland Police confirm that they have received notice concerning Saturday’s demonstration and informs us that they are taking precautions in anticipation of eventual counter-demonstrations.

Additional translation of that last sentence: Watch out for the autonomer! They will be out in force to respond to the “armed right-wing extremists”.

Wait and see.

The recent controversy over Mikko Ellilä, the Finnish blogger who was subjected to a police interview due to the content of his blog, prompted our Swedish correspondent LN to write to us.

Several people have noticed that the term — hets mot folkgrupp — for the offense in question, as listed in the Finnish penal code, is a Swedish phrase and not Finnish.

LN has researched and translated the relevant portion of the Swedish penal statute for the same offense. He deserves our thanks — all that legal language must be tough reading, even if you’re a native Swede.

Here’s LN’s translation, with his brief introduction:

In reference to the current case of Mikko Ellilä in Finland, since the Finnish legislation involved is built on Swedish legislation (from 1948, I think), it could be useful to know what the Swedish law says.

I have therfore made this very limping translation, true in meaning — except for how to translate hets mot folkgrupp where hets might mean either or all of the following: “disrespect”, “contempt”, and/or “weak threat”. Also, the Swedish word mål means a lot of things; here 1 mål = “target” and 2 mål = “legal case”.

I believe the actual law was written with respect to the Jews in postwar Sweden.

Probably all of us anti-Islamists are bigger or smaller lawbreakers with respect to the Penal Code Chapter 16, Section 8, — what do you think??

‘Hets mot folkgrupp’ är ett brott som innebär att offentligt sprida uttalanden som uttrycker missaktning för en eller flera utpekade folkgrupper. Enligt svensk rätt, är hets mot folkgrupp att uppsåtligen, och utan att det finns någon objektiv ansvarsfrihetsgrund i det enskilda fallet i uttalande eller i annat meddelande som sprids, uttrycka missaktning för folkgrupp eller annan sådan grupp av personer med anspelning på nationellt ursprung, etniskt ursprung eller trosbekännelse.

“‘Agitation against an ethnic group’ is a crime implying the public dissemination of statements or pronouncements expressing disrespect (contempt?) for one or several designated ethnic groups. Within Swedish jurisdiction, agitation against an ethnic group means any willful expressions or other forms of information that are officially spread, and, without there being in an individual case any objective exemption from criminal liability in a statement or other message that is disseminated, express disrespect (contempt?) for a group of people or any other similar group of people with allusion to origin of nationality, ethnic origin, or confession of faith.”

– – – – – – – – – –

Om straffmätningen stadgas: För brottet ‘hets mot folkgrupp’ döms i svensk domstol till fängelse i högst två år, eller om brottet är ringa, till böter. Om brottet anses som grovt döms till fängelse i lägst sex månader och högst fyra år. Vid bedömande av om brottet är grovt ska domstolen särskilt beakta om meddelandet haft ett särskilt hotfullt eller kränkande innehåll och spritts till ett stort antal personer på ett sätt som varit ägnat att väcka betydande uppmärksamhet.

“Concerning penalties to be meted out, it is decreed: For the crime ‘agitation against an ethnic group’, in a Swedish court one is to be sentenced at the most to two years in prison, or if the crime is minor, to a fine. If the crime is considered coarse [grovt — same meaning in Danish. Perhaps meaning ‘debased’ in this context…? — BB] one is to be sentenced to prison for no less than six months and no more than four years. In assessing whether the crime is coarse, the court will especially take into consideration whether the message contained any overt threat or offensive content and had been disseminated to a large number of persons in a way that has been intended to attract significant attention.”

Med begreppet folkgrupp avses enligt Justitiekanslern varje existerande etnicitet utom den svenska. Att svenskar undantas förklarar JK med att syftet vid tillkomsten av straffstadgandet om hets mot folkgrupp var att tillförsäkra minoritetsgrupper av skilda sammansättningar och bekännare av olika trosuppfattningar ett rättsskydd. Det fallet att någon uttrycker kritik mot svenskar torde inte ha varit avsett att träffas av straffstadgandet. Det bör dock påpekas att JK inte är en praxisskapande eller tolkningsvägledande instans och att uttalandet därför inte påverkar tolkningen av lagens lydelse.

“The concept ‘folk group’ or ‘ethnic group’ implies, according to the Chancellor of Justice, each existing ethnicity except the Swedish ethnicity. The Chancellor of Justice explains the exclusion of the Swedish people by stating that the aim of the penal statute about ‘agitation against an ethnic group’ was to ensure legal protection to minority groups of different compositions and confessing different faiths. A case in which someone expresses criticism against Swedes was probably not intended to meet the statute of penalty. It should however be pointed out that the Chancellor of Justice neither stands as a generator of precedent nor serves as an instance of guidance for interpretation of authority, and that the statement therefore does not influence the interpretation of the law’s wording.”

Mr. Ellilä was summoned by the police for his hearing yesterday. As soon I have a report of the outcome, I will post it.

We got an email this morning from Fausta, with this appeal:

The Princeton Public Library is holding a “Human Rights Film Festival” from May 11th through the 13th. It includes two Castro propaganda films, The Power of Community: How Cuba Survived Peak Oil, and Salud! What puts Cuba on the map in the quest for global health… but the roster is pretty awful.

Those of you out of state might want to call Leslie Burger, head of the PPL, also head of the American Library Association — the number for the library is 609-924-9529.

I welcome all suggestions.

Thanks,
Fausta

You can see Fausta’s post on the topic here. I don’t need to remind readers that all phone calls to the Princeton Public Library should be polite, calm, reasonable, and courteous.

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

I went over to the Human Rights Film Festival and had a look around. Yes, the Fidelistas are there, just as described by Fausta. But if you scroll through the list you’ll find a motley crew of other artists, performers, activists, and enlightened beings of different kinds, all celebrating diversity and seeking peace and justice. But don’t look for any conservatives in the mix — the Festival is not that diverse. The political positions represented there range from the denim-and-granola tree-hugging Save the Earth types through pinkos of various stripes and statures all the way to the hardcore Reds and Anarchists of the far Left.

If you decide to attend the Festival, you can watch “Cartoons for Peace and Justice”.

Or you can sit down and enjoy “The Dog Who Was a Cat Inside”:

The dog and the cat who is inside of him have to learn to live together peacefully, even though they want very different things.

Dogs at peace with cats — OK, I can dig it.

But keep scrolling and you’ll run into this young woman:

Walidah Imarisha (Director: Finding Common Ground in New Orleans):

Walidah Imarisha helped to found and served as the first editor of the political hip hop publication AWOL Magazine. She was one of the editors of the 911 anthology Another World is Possible. The bad half of the poetry duo Good Sista/Bad Sista, She has been featured on PBS, VH1 and has performed with people as diverse as writer John Irving to Chuck D.

Her post-Katrina documentary Finding Common Ground in New Orleans, has screened at the Museum of Modern Art as well as numerous film festivals around the world. She does anti prison organizing with the Human Rights Coalition, a group of prisoners’ families and former prisoners and is on the board of the Central Committee for Conscientious Objectors, which does anti militarism organizing work.

I was intrigued by Ms. Imarisha, and went on a little internet snipe hunt to see what else I could find out about her.

Her bio at Live Poets says this about her:

Described as “a homegirl with a hand grenade”, Walidah uses her words to spark crowds. A historian at heart, reporter by day she stays true to the cause by “slapping ya ass silly with knowledge.”

And this is how she describes herself in her Live Journal profile:

i’m the bad sista to the good sista, both of us two sides of the same coin. the good sista will negotiate, commiserate and empathize, but if that don’t work, ima come in to intimidate, instigate and pulvarize. it’s all up to you… in another life i was a journalist, and i’m trying to get back into that. i am an organizer, a rabble rouser, a sometimes grump, and i aspire to be a revolutionary.

But she also turns out to be a fan of the Free Mumia movement, and works tirelessly to get the notorious cop-killer Mumia Abu-Jamal, a.k.a. Wesley Cook, released from death row.
– – – – – – – – – –
Ms. Imarisha provided the text for a MOVE photo-essay hosted by San Diego Indymedia. That’s right: MOVE, the hardcore anarchist revolutionary commune that got into that little contretemps with the Philadelphia authorities back in 1985.

Another World is Possible is an anthology of post-9/11 thought marketed by Global Exchange. I’ll let the site blurb describe the book:

Another World is Possible begins with personal stories from September 11th. It follows with: Why did this happen? Analysis of US foreign policy in the Middle East, and the backlash against Arab-Americans and freedoms at home. And: Where do we go from here personally? Spiritually? In foreign policy? As a society?

Much has been said about the necessity of stopping Al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and the Anthrax senders little about the role of the US military in training and funding these monsters, nor the likelihood that Bush’s cowboy-style reaction will leave Americans even more vulnerable to future attacks.

Contributors Tell Stories that have gone underreported in the media: The families of dead and displaced undocumented workers who were denied relief; the thousand plus detained and unexplained people; the profoundly unpatriotic ‘Patriot Act’; Bush’s insane energy policy; the ill-conceived sanctions on Iraq; the diversion of relief funds to corporate bailouts; and systematic silencing of those questioning the Washington war consensus.

All those silenced people! Back in March I was in DC with some of those silenced anarchists, and they were among the loudest silenced people I’ve ever encountered. They got plenty of worldwide media coverage, too, strangely enough.

“Wait, Baron!” you say. “This is all very well, but what’s it got to do with Jihad?”

Well maybe nothing. Or hardly anything. But there is this, from a charming event back in 2003:

Know Your Rights: Stop the USA Patriot Act!
Saturday, January 25th 2003 4:00pm
Philadelphia, PA USA
Forum Begins at 4:00pm, Dinner Served at 6:15
Sister Carla Muhammad School of Philadelphia Masjid
(4700 Wyalusing Avenue)

Through new legislation and Executive orders, the Bush Administration has radically altered our constitutional rights. Under the auspices of investigating “terrorism,” the government may now infringe upon your legal rights without probable cause. Join other concerned citizens at Philadelphia’s largest mosque to promote education for action in defense of civil liberties.

Speakers Include:

Mahdi Bray, Muslim American Society Freedom Foundation
Sally Baraka, Muslim Bar Association of Philadelphia
Judith Bernstein-Baker, Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society
Habeebah Ali, Unite for Peace
Walidah Imarisha, AWOL Magazine

Sponsored By:

Unite for Peace, the American Muslim Society of the Tristate Region, African People’s Soildarity Commitee, Arab-American Community Development Corporation, Black Radical Congres of Philadelphia, the Muslim Bar Association of Philadelphia, Philadelphia Chapter of the National Organization for Women, the Shalom Center, Why War?

Look at that list of supporters — a veritable alphabet soup of the usual suspects among the Muslim-American “charity” organizations, along with their lefty fellow-travelers.

But the Shalom Center! Don’t they know any better?

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Walidah Imarisha, as a citizen of this great country, has a right to air her views, and I’ll be among the first to step forward and support her privilege under the First Amendment — provided, of course, that her words don’t extend as far as incitement to violence or conspiring to overthrow the United States government.

My objection, however, is the usual one: Why do my taxes have to pay for all this flumdiddle?

Strictly speaking, for this particular event, it’s probably more Fausta’s taxes than mine, since she actually lives in the state of New Jersey.

But how much do you want to bet that some of those federal arts grant dollars have trickled their way down to help support Walidah Imarisha’s zeal for Peace ’n’ Justice?

I’m a broken record, folks. From PBS to the NEA to Homeland Security to federal crop subsidies — you might as well just pile your tax dollars into a wheelbarrow and dump them into the trashburner rather than send them to Uncle Sam.

But don’t light them! EPA regulations prohibit the open-air combustion of colored ink papers.

Tsk, tsk.

The Finnish blogger Mikko Ellilä faces a police interrogation today for the “hate speech” on his blog. He left a message for us this morning in the comments on our most recent post on this topic:

I posted the information below in my blog on Friday, but in case some people reading the Gates of Vienna have not read this info yet, I will copy and paste it here:

Mikko “Big Brother” Puumalainen [the Ombudsman for minorities] has said in numerous press statements and interviews that all opinions that help maintain the current anti-immigrationist political atmosphere in Finland ought to be totally criminalised. In other words, he wants to change the political climate of the country by banning all opinions that are not in line with the multiculti teletubby utopian view of immigrants.

In Nazi Germany, the first thing that Hitler did when he was given dictatorial powers in March 1933 was to ban all newspapers critical towards Nazism. Puumalainen wants to do the exact same thing. He explicitly says that my blog should not be allowed to exist because I am saying that African immigrants commit more crimes than the Finns do. This is a fact that I have demonstrated by quoting crime statistics published by the Ministry of Justice, but in the opinion of Mikko “Big Brother” Puumalainen, even facts can be “hate speech”.

This time he did not mention Islam in connection with these allegations of racism, but I could not know this before Friday evening (the interrogation is on Monday [May 7th]) because he repeatedly refused to specify his allegations and to email me the relevant material that he had sent to the police. I was able to obtain the material from him only after I notified him that I could sue him for failing to send me the relevant material because the police had explicitly asked me to comment on his allegations in written form, which I obviously could not do as long as I had not even seen the allegations in the first place. Puumalainen undoubtedly committed a crime by acting like this.

In other words, a criminal bureaucrat is harassing me. Puumalainen is also seriously wasting taxpayer money by forcing the police to spend time reading my blog posts and discussing them with me, instead of trying to catch criminals.

Rapes are up by 64 % from last year, according to the official crime statistics that Puumalainen wants to make illegal. Puumalainen wants to stop people from knowing how many crimes are being committed, and by whom, i.e. by Finns or by immigrants.

I have mentioned in my blog that immigrants commit 20 (twenty) times more (as in 2,000% of) acts of rape per capita than the Finns do, again by quoting crime statistics published by the Ministry of Justice. If this is “hate speech”, Puumalainen will have to sue the Ministry of Justice.

[Update: Mikko Ellilä originally wrote “2,000% more” and not “2,000% of” in the above paragraph. I changed “more” to “of “ to reflect correct English usage, and also because I have a finicky dedication to mathematical precision.

For instance, if the price of something doubles, it is “100% more” (that is, an increase of 100%). It is also “200% of” the original amount. So “of” and “more” have well-defined and distinct meanings in this context.

If I had left “more” the statement, I would have had to change it to “1,900% more” in order to be accurate.

If I didn’t correct it, commenters would have had fun pointing out the error. We can always count on our commenters to do that. 🙂 — BB]

With the recent very large increase in the number of rapes, the police should allocate more resources to try to catch those rapists, but no, Puumalainen wants the cops to spend time chatting with me instead.

– – – – – – – – – –

Also, it is extremely important to remember that since this man has repeatedly and explicitly said in the media that all facts and opinions that “help maintain the current anti-immigrationist political atmosphere” ought to be totally criminalised, he obviously wants to make criticism of Islam illegal because the Muslims are immigrants, and if the Finns have a negative opinion of Muslims, they will not be in favour of open immigration from Africa and the Middle East.

He also systematically lies about the actual content of my blog posts in the allegations in his letter to the police. He says I am “comparing certain ethnic groups” to animals which I have certainly never done. I said people in general are biological beings, evolutionary in nature, shaped and guided by their genes, as opposed to created by a divine hand. Puumalainen is saying that this means I think black people are subhuman. This is a flat-out lie. It never ceases to amaze me how people think they can get away with such absolutely obvious lies. This is totally disgusting.

As soon as word comes in, we’ll be reporting the outcome of Mr. Ellilä’s little chat with the Gestapo police.

At the Counterjihad Summit last month, SIAD (Stop the Islamification of Denmark) asked me if I would make some “Holger Danske Vågner” T-shirts. Fortunately, one of the reasons I went to Denmark was to take my own photo of the old warrior in his cellar under Kronborg. When I came home I was able to make a high-resolution version of the design, one that would be suitable for T-shirts and other materials

So now we have opened a Holger Danske store at Café Press.

Besides T-shirts, I made variations of the design and put them on mugs, buttons, bumperstickers, and other Holger-related items. There’s even a tote bag, suitable for packing sildesalat and snaps for a picnic on the reboubts of the slot.

For more information on Holger Danske, see The Twelfth Viking.

[Nothing follows.]

But Starbucks obviously wasn’t Raised Right, for we are now being subjected to preaching from their choir — which is not necessarily our choice of reading material.

Someone in the Starbucks organization lives in a multicultural bubble because now their disposable cups have enlightened little messages on them. At least they’re enlightened by Seattle standards.

The first example of preaching from the side of the cup shown in this article is rigorously anti-God, which is the default belief system in such circles. “God” is for the unwashed in fly-over country. Theism is not a coastal concept, as you can see here:

“Why in moments of crisis do we ask God for strength and help? As cognitive beings, why would we ask something that may well be a figment of our imaginations for guidance? Why not search inside ourselves for the power to overcome? After all, we are strong enough to cause most of the catastrophes we need to endure.”

Well, let’s unpack this series of theological statements, shall we?

“Why in moments of crisis do we ask God for strength and help?”

Nobody says you have to, fella. If it doesn’t ring your bell, by all means refrain from asking. Join Nietzsche and the gang and be an Überman. But if you don’t mind, we’ll just watch you from here. Go for it.

“As cognitive beings, why would we ask something that may well be a figment of our imaginations for guidance?”

As cognitive beings we’re capable of making choices and if someone experiences a sense of the numinous and turns toward it, while all you feel is figments, then you can’t get there from here anyway.

“Why not search inside ourselves for the power to overcome?”

How do you know with such certainty that this egotistical rummaging through the contents of one’s mind is all that informative? Why not ask another being, human or otherwise, for advice? Or is that being insufficient to thyself?

“After all, we are strong enough to cause most of the catastrophes we need to endure.”

Speak for yourself. If, through my own inadvertence I were to cause a car accident which left me a quadriplegic, I sure would need more than just my own strength to “endure” the catastrophe I caused. Just for starters, without someone to lift me up, I’d have to lie in my own urine because I sure wouldn’t be taking a trip to the bathroom again in this lifetime.

In fact, that may be the most sophomoric sentence I’ve read this year. It’s as mindlessly cynical as its opposite expression, “God never gives you a cross greater than you can bear” is mindlessly sentimental. Both of them posit a breath-takingly shallow optimism.

However, while his pithy little sermon does show this guy’s hang-up about being self-sufficient, it also reveals him as a fake. If he were all that autonomous he wouldn’t need to convince the rest of us that he’s got The Answer. Wise men don’t say, they simply do.

And wise men, sufficient unto themselves, wouldn’t be caught dead letting someone stamp their sentiments on a Starbucks cup, for heaven’s sake. Sheesh, mornings in the city are hard enough without preachers on the pasteboard.

Here’s another example, too… also from the Seattle mindset:

“My only regret about being gay is that I repressed it for so long. I surrendered my youth to the people I feared when I could have been out there loving someone. Don’t make that mistake yourself. Life’s too damn short.”

Oh, big deal.
– – – – – – – – – –
Most of us “surrender our youth” to fear because we want to be accepted. And if there is one thing “youth” is not capable of doing, it’s truly loving someone else. At that age we are of necessity self-absorbed little beings. We have to be: for one thing, our brain hasn’t developed the synapses for mature love. For another, we’re too busy carving out a stable identity. We don’t have the necessary maturity to love others for themselves.

What is it with Starbucks? It’s not enough to sell a bazillion cups of very personalized latte — make mine a half-caf grande latte with hazelnut, please? — but it has to add pithy preaching on the side? It looks like you’ll have to preface your order with “plain cup, no preaching, please” if you want to drink your coffee in peace.

I can’t wait to see what they’ll put up about George Bush. I can just imagine how high-minded the condemnation will sound.

Anyone care to write the script? We’ll send it in to Starbucks for you.

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 have tried to contribute to a new vocabulary by coining the word “Caucasophobia” for anti-white racism, and have suggested the term “self-termination” for organized Western self-loathing and the Western policy of unilaterally dismantling our own culture. Both terms are OK, but if somebody can come up with something better and more catchy, I’m all ears. One can say many bad things about the word “Islamophobia,” but it’s easy to understand and sticks in your mind. If the shariabots can come up with a word like that then infidels shouldn’t be any less inventive.

We are against Sharia and Jihad, but what are we for? What is Western civilization? What exactly sets it apart from others and makes it worth keeping? If we’re going to defend “freedom” and “Western civilization,” we need to define precisely what we are talking about.

I would personally say that the emphasis on the individual is our most defining trait as a civilization. Both Muslims and internal collectivists hate our individualism the most, because it stands in the way of their ideologies. This is why they go to great lengths to smash it and replace it with group thinking. However, even our individualism can potentially be carried into such extremes that it can become a problem. Individuals still need to feel part of something greater and enduring, or society will be left unable to defend itself.

Another Western trait is a non-fatalistic outlook on the world and a belief in the ability of individuals to affect their own future, combined with linear thinking versus circular thinking, a high value placed on rationality versus emotionalism and last, but not least, curiosity — wanting to know how things “tick.”

I still remember the first time I read the Koran. I soon discovered how intolerant it was, but my first impression was actually not that it was violent, but that it was remarkably incoherent and difficult to read. It’s frequently self-contradictory, and Allah is portrayed as an unpredictable god. The Bible is more structured and with a higher literary quality than the Koran, even to a non-religious person. When European scientists initiated the Scientific Revolution, they assumed that God had made nature according to logical patterns that could be uncovered and predicted. But Islam, starting out with the structure of the Koran itself, assumes that there is no pattern, and that nature is simply subject to Allah’s whims.

I have given detailed explanations to non-Muslims of how Muslims continuously deceive infidels, but frankly, Muslims even lie to each other. I’ve gradually come to the conclusion that it’s not so much about lying as about the fact that truth is irrelevant in Islamic culture, which is why all kinds of ridiculous conspiracy theories always find an eager audience there. Notice how Pakistani ex-Muslim Mohammed Rasoel writes in his book The Downfall of the Netherlands — Land of the Naive Fools how he comes from a culture where people “lie all the time,” and consider persons who actually say what they think to be gullible fools.

Needless to say, this is also why Muslims have such a poor track record in science. Science is about uncovering truth, and if you come from a culture which holds that truth is irrelevant, you have a huge handicap. That is why the Scientific Revolution happened in Christian Europe, and not in the Islamic Middle East.

The sad part is, we are abandoning the scientific method in the West as well. And it’s not the only instance where we are regressing. Hate crime legislation constitutes a radical departure from the idea of equality before the law. You will be punished differently for assaulting a black Muslim than for the same crime against a white Christian, a Hindu woman or a Jewish woman, a gay man or a straight man etc. Some would argue that this already happens in real life. However, the point here is that this principle has now become a formal aspect of the law. This constitutes a gross perversion of justice. It mirrors Islamic law, which mandates different punishments for the same crime, depending upon the religious background and the sex of both the perpetrator and the victim.
– – – – – – – – – –
Islam has always valued individual life inequitably. But now there is a creeping tendency within the West toward the same view. In the case of assault or murder, an additional sentence is added if the act is viewed as a “hate crime.” Murder is murder, and all human life is to be valued equally. However, according to Multiculturalism we are required to treat all cultures and religions as equally valid, which they obviously are not. This perversion of reality makes the Western system of justice vulnerable to infiltration by Islamic law.

The West has traditionally been a rational civilization. We now have an emotional culture, which we see clearly in the immigration debate where emphasis is on whether you “feel good” and whether your “intentions” are good when you support mass immigration, not on rationally calculating the long-term consequences of your actions.

Our education system is no longer dedicated to searching for truth or even recognizing the concept that there is such a thing as “truth” in the first place, only multiple truths, all equally valid. Christian Europe could stage the Scientific Revolution precisely because it believed in truth and wanted to uncover truth. Post-Christian, Multicultural Europe no longer believes in truth, and would thus have been unable to stage the Scientific Revolution.

It is remarkable to notice how effective the “counter-culture” of the 1960s has been at attacking the pillars of Western civilization: Our education system is now used to dismantle our culture, not to uphold it, and has moved from the Age of Reason to the Age of Deconstruction. We have thus abandoned the ideal of rationality and objectivity, which used to be the foundation of our culture.

Our religious heritage as well as the social basis of our society, the nuclear family, has been under constant attack. Our legal system, at least in Europe, is moving away from the ideal of laws passed with the consent of the people and with their best interest in mind into transnational legislation written by faceless technocrats, with no loyalty to any specific people. The EU Constitution betrays an almost sharia-like desire to control all aspects of our lives, instead of upholding law and order and otherwise staying out of the way.

And finally, we are in the middle of an age where focus is on “subgroups” within the nation state, not on individuals. The anti-Westerners have taken great care to break down our religion, our individualism, our rationalism and finally our connection with the past, to make sure we don’t remember that we ever possessed any of these traits in the first place. Unfortunately, they have succeeded rather well so far. We are abandoning what once made us great, and are moving in the direction of Sharia Lite when it comes to free speech, equality before the law, and lack of rationalism.

What are we fighting for? We are fighting for freedom of thought and for freedom of speech, for the right to criticize not just our government, but all doctrines, political and religious. The fight against hate speech and hate crime legislation now constitutes a front line in the battle for liberty.

We are fighting for secular laws passed with the consent of the people, not sharia nor transnational legislation drafted by bureaucrats and technocrats unaccountable to the people. We do not want to be held hostage by international NGOs, transnational progressives or self-appointed guardians of the truth. Likewise, we are fighting for national sovereignty. No nation regardless of political system can survive the loss of its territorial integrity, but democratic states especially so. We pay national taxes because our authorities are supposed to uphold our national borders. If they can’t do so, the social contract is breached, and we should no longer be required to pay our taxes.

We are fighting for equality before the law. Hate crime legislation is weakening this, by treating people as members of a group, gay-straight, male-female, black-white etc, instead of as an individual, and also de facto results in unequal punishment for the same crime.

We are fighting for the right to view a nation as a cultural unit, not just a random space on a map. A country has the right to decide how much, if any, immigration it wants to accept. The idea of unlimited mass migration is 21st century Communism. Man is not just homo economicus, the economic man, the sum of his functions as labor and consumer, who can be supplanted from one region of the world to the next at will. Multiculturalism implicitly means that the native population have to suppress and erase their own cultural traditions and historical identity. People have the right to want to preserve their culture and pass it on to future generations.

Finally, I’d like to talk about one aspect of Western culture that tends to be downplayed, but is quite important: We are the only culture in the history of mankind to develop realistic, faithful depictions of beings and matter in our paintings and sculptures, rather than merely stylized depictions. We are also the only culture to invent a way to depict three-dimensional subjects in a two-dimensional format. A similar three-dimensional perspective was lacking in all other types of early art, be that Chinese or Japanese, East Indian, Mesoamerican, African or Middle Eastern. This could conceivably be because we have perceived space and spatial relationships in a different way than the rest of the world. What does that mean for our culture?

Egyptian art was dedicated to preserving the body for the afterlife. Artists drew from memory, according to strict rules. The ancient Egyptians were not Westerners, but they did contribute a lot to those who later became Westerners, the Greeks and the Romans.

In the brilliant book The Story of Art, writer E.H. Gombrich explains this. For an Egyptian artist, “once he had mastered all these rules he had finished his apprenticeship. No one wanted anything different, no one asked him to be ‘original’. On the contrary, he was probably considered the best artist who could make his statues most like the admired monuments of the past. So it happened that in the course of three thousand years or more Egyptian art changed very little. Everything that was considered good and beautiful in the age of the pyramids was held to be just as excellent a thousand years later.”

There was only one major exception to this, and that was the heretical Pharaoh Akhenaten in the 14th century BC. The art depicting him and his wife Nefertiti is quite naturalistic. It is unlike anything before in Egyptian history, and may have been inspired by that of the Minoan culture on the island of Crete, by many considered to be the first European civilization. Some of this style is still discernible in objects found in the tomb of Tutankhaten, believed to be son of Akhenaten, who later changed his name to Tutankhamun as the old religion was reestablished.

Even though the artistic legacy of Akhenaten was quickly forgotten, his religious ideas may have proven far more durable. His insistence on worshipping one supreme god, Aten, makes him a pioneer in monotheism. It has been speculated, though disputed by many scholars, that Akhenaten’s ideas may have inspired those of Moses, which led to the creation of Judaism and, by extension, Christianity.

What is less disputed is that the earliest alphabet, the ancestor of nearly every alphabet used around the globe, including, via Phoenician, the Greek and the Latin ones, was partly derived from Egyptian hieroglyphs representing syllables.

Greek artists studied and imitated Egyptian art, but experimented and decided to look for themselves instead of following any traditional, ready-made formula. As Gombrich says, “The Greeks began to use their eyes. Once this revolution had begun, there was no stopping it.” It is surely no coincidence that this Great Awakening of art to freedom took place in the hundred years between, roughly, 520 and 420 BC, in Greek city-states such as Athens where philosopher Socrates challenged our ideas about the world:

“It was here, above all, that the greatest and most astonishing revolution in the whole history of art bore fruit. (…) The great revolution of Greek art, the discovery of natural forms and of foreshortening, happened at the time which is altogether the most amazing period of human history.” This art was later spread far beyond the borders of Greece, when Alexander the Great created his empire and brought Hellenistic art to Asia:

“Even in far-distant India, the Roman way of telling a story, and of glorifying a hero, was adopted by artists who set themselves the task of illustrating the story of a peaceful conquest, the story of the Buddha. The art of sculpture had flourished in India long before the Hellenistic influence reached the country; but it was in the frontier region of Gandhara that the figure of Buddha was first shown in the reliefs which became the model for later Buddhist art. (…) Greek and Roman art, which had taught men to visualize gods and heroes in beautiful form, also helped the Indians to create an image of their saviour. The beautiful head of the Buddha, with its expression of deep repose, was also made in this frontier region of Gandhara.”

Buddhism spread from India to the rest of Asia, and brought with it these influences from Western art. This is highly significant if we remember that the invention of block printing during the Tang dynasty in China was intimately linked to Buddhist monasteries and Buddhist art. Alexander the Great may also have brought with him inked seals to India during his invasion, and Indian merchants later introduced them to the Chinese. Stamped figures of the Buddha marked the transition from seal impression to woodcut in China.

The oldest surviving printed texts from East Asia are Buddhist scriptures. Printing was thus used to promulgate a specific religion, just like Gutenberg’s printing press in Europe was later used to print Bibles. The Islamic Middle East, however, for centuries rejected both the Eastern and the Western printing traditions due to religious intolerance and hostility towards pictorial arts. And they suffered all the more for it.

This blog has been a frequent critic of the Department of Homeland Security. As far as any citizen without an official security clearance can tell, DHS is huge, unwieldy, expensive, and not measurably more effective than the agencies it gobbled up when it was formed. It has always been a bureaucrat’s dream, an expanded opportunity for patronage, pork, nepotism, and the exercise of unbridled discretionary power.

Remember when the Transportation Security Agency took over airport security control? Did you feel safer then?

Well, let’s hope that they do better at protecting air travelers than they do at protecting their own employees’ confidential data:

Transportation Security Administration Loses Hard Drive Containing 100,000 Employee Records

The Transportation Security Administration has lost a computer hard drive containing Social Security numbers, bank data and payroll information for about 100,000 employee records.

Authorities realized Thursday the hard drive was missing from a controlled area at TSA headquarters. TSA Administrator Kip Hawley sent a letter to employees Friday apologizing for the lost data and promising to pay for one year of credit monitoring services.

“TSA has no evidence that an unauthorized individual is using your personal information, but we bring this incident to your attention so that you can be alert to signs of any possible misuse of your identity,” Hawley wrote in the letter, which was obtained by The Associated Press. “We profoundly apologize for any inconvenience and concern that this incident has caused you.”

“The agency said it did not know whether the device is still within headquarters or was stolen,” the agency said in a statement Friday.

TSA said it has asked the FBI and Secret Service to investigate and said it would fire anyone discovered to have violated the agency’s data-protection policies.

– – – – – – – – – –
Have you noticed how often this kind of thing happens? It seems that just about every week some government agency manages to lose a huge quantity of personal data, a windfall for all those con men who would otherwise have to spend years spamming and phishing to get the same data.

More than once it has been a government agency charged with our security that lost the data. These are the people who are supposed to be better than we are at keeping information confidential.

Huge bureaucracies are the bane of Western societies. The heads of government agencies enjoy lavish lifestyles at taxpayer expense while spending enormous amounts of money covering up their errors, deficiencies, and crimes.

The widespread illusion that the bloated power of the federal government is a net gain for American citizens is one of the greatest successful scams of modern times.

Atlas Shrugs has some lively video of a small demonstration in New York City yesterday. Protestors lined up with placards as people went into a CAIR meeting. You could tell that the CAIR people were not pleased.

Equally annoyed was the useful idiot rabbi who attended the meeting. He obviously didn’t want his picture taken. And he didn’t act much like any rabbis I know.

Take a look at Atlas’ work and her interview with Joe Kaufman.

[post ends here]

On Thursday, the House of Representatives voted 237-180 to extend existing federal “hate crimes” laws to protect certain groups against crimes which are motivated by the victim’s gender or disability or sexual orientation.

In choosing its politically correct favorite victims, 237 representatives explicitly refused to acknowledge the vulnerability of the military as targets, even though there are established cases of hatred toward those in uniform. Old people were also voted off this bill, even though they are often the targets of crime because of their age or infirmity.

H.R. 1592 : Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2007 is a despicable bill. Were it to be enacted, it would swell an already bloated federal government just that much more. It would cost you and me more money, for no discernibly better outcome. It would lengthen trials and cost local governments more money as prosecutors and defenders argued the “true” motives of an assault against those special someones on the endangered list.

When you stop to think about it, this piece of legislation has much in common with Sharia laws: they both say that some of us are more equal than others. We know whom H. R. 1592 protects, and whom it leaves in the dust. Compare it with Sharia law where Muslim men are compensated at a higher level because they are worth more than Muslim women, and infidel women rate lower than infidel men. It’s a case of diminishing punishment depending on how far up the food chain you are.

Here’s a hint: white heterosexual men almost disappear off the list. I know: my straight white son was beaten by a group of black “youths” who broke his ribs for fun. The police took a report and shrugged. End of that hate crime…except for his ribs, which are still mending.

Now in America if you’re a homosexual victim and the feds can prove your attacker went after you because of your sexual orientation and not because you were wearing a Rolex and he wanted it, then you get a higher rate of return on your vengeance than would an old person whose purse containing her Social Security check was ripped off her shoulder, causing her to fall and break her hip.

And that’s progressive law in a nutshell: some victims are more equal than others, and any situation where the federal government can stick its nose is now an improvement over local law enforcement.

Fortunately, the President will veto this wrong-headed notion of “justice” based on special privilege. Fortunately, too, the House doesn’t have enough votes to override his signature.

This is a cynical piece of work. The Dems can use it to campaign on their tough attitude toward hate crimes — hmm… are there any love crimes? — and the Republicans can use it to taunt the Dems for trying to blow the federal balloon just that much bigger.

Do you know how your representative voted? Below the fold is a list of the Republicans who voted for this despicable waste of time and resources. If your rep appears on this roll, I strongly urge you to give him or her a nudge, even if you think it’s a hopeless cause. Perhaps especially if you think your representative is nothing but a quintessential pol… they’re the ones who don’t want to hear your dissent, so be sure to share it. Be polite and firm. Tell him why his vote for something that is unconstitutional — i.e., that we are purportedly all equal in the sight of the law — will motivate you to campaign against his continued presence in the halls of Congress.
– – – – – – – – – – –
You can find the addresses and emails here. Don’t use snail mail for the Washington office as it is quarantined. If you want to send a letter use a district office address instead. Most representatives maintain more than one district office, especially if it covers a large geographical area. Emails and phone calls work fine, too, especially if you know you won’t get around to posting a letter.

Don’t bother to contact a representative outside your district. They seem to take great pleasure in reminding you that you’re not in their district, so they don’t have to listen to you. Even Mrs. Pelosi does this, despite her position as the national Speaker of the House.

Now, let’s see what they drag up next. Harry Reid has some ideas about old legislation.

Seems like this group can’t do much but wash, rinse, repeat….

State		Dist		Name
California		CA-45		Bono, Mary
Connecticut		CT-4		Shays, Christopher
Delaware		DE-0		Castle, Michael
Florida		FL-21		Diaz-Balart, Lincoln
		FL-25		Diaz-Balart, Mario
		FL-18		Ros-Lehtinen, Ileana
Illinois		IL-13		Biggert, Judy
		IL-10		Kirk, Mark
		IL-18		LaHood, Ray
Louisiana		LA-4		McCrery, James
Maryland		MD-1		Gilchrest, Wayne
Nevada		NV-3		Porter, Jon
New Jersey		NJ-7		Ferguson, Michael
		NJ-11		Frelinghuysen, Rodney
		NJ-2		LoBiondo, Frank
		NJ-3		Saxton, H.
New York		NY-29		Kuhl, John
		NY-25		Walsh, James
Ohio		OH-15		Pryce, Deborah
Oregon		OR-2		Walden, Greg
Pennsylvania		PA-15		Dent, Charles
		PA-3		English, Philip
		PA-6		Gerlach, Jim
		PA-19		Platts, Todd
Washington		WA-8		Reichert, Dave

A new church is being built in one of the rough neighborhoods of the French city of Sartrouville. But the bells in its tower will never call the faithful to prayer — in fact, its tower won’t have any bells.

That’s because the church authorities and the parish priest have decided to be sensitive about their Muslim neighbors. There’s no indication that the Muslims have made any particular demands for the silencing of bells, but the church is doing it anyway.

The parish is in one of the Zones Urbaines Sensibles (“Sensitive Urban Zones”, or ZUS). These are largely immigrant districts that have so deteriorated that they have been bureaucratically designated as troubled — and in many cases lawless — areas where special administrative procedures are in place.

The official website of the new church has an architect’s drawing of the future church, and it looks like any other modern site — but no bell. It’s a little surprising that they allow it to display a cross.

I don’t know what to make of this peculiar example of French dhimmitude. The whole thing is occurring in a low-key voluntary manner, and no one is making any great fuss about it. Still…

The upside is that the new building is needed because of an increase in the number of worshippers, especially young people. So there’s hope yet.

Below is my translation of an article from today’s Le Figaro about the new church. I have translated cité as “city” or “housing project”, depending on the context. This may not be the right idiom; I welcome correction from our Francophone readers. When part of a place name, I have left it untranslated — I believe that these are the names of specific housing projects.

In Sartrouville, the church in the projects will have no bells

In order not to “provoke” the population of the surrounding neighborhoods with a Muslim majority, the new building will be illuminated but… mute.

The building should be completed by the end of the year. For the moment, at the junction of l’avenue Georges-Clemenceau and la rue Saint-Exupéry, it is just a building site surrounded by high scaffolding, like hundreds of others in Sartrouville (Yvelines). A varied and indifferent crowd of pedestrians strolls along the street, unconcerned about the structure, which is already thirty feet high, and the pennants hung here and there calling for them to make their donations.

Because this building site is unusual. Located on the plateau of the second-largest city in the department, in the very heart of the “sensitive areas”, it is a church in the process of rising from the ground, as attested by the square bell-tower, already completed and decorated with the cross. An event in itself in a district classified as “sensitive urban zone”. And — all the more notable as a construction — in order not to “provoke” the population of the district, which has a Muslim majority, the building will not have a bell. In place of a great bell, the stained glass will be lit by a projector, making the building an illuminated edifice, but… mute.

It’s an intentional choice. “The Christians are not the only inhabitants of the district,” explains Fr. Alexandre de Bucy, the priest of Saint-Vincent-de-Paul parish which covers the northern part of Sartrouville. “Many do not share our faith, even if they respect us. Out of regard for the neighbors who did not have a bell close by up until now, we did not want to put one up.” The faithful do not seem to be disturbed by the prospect. “A church without a bell, it is not very normal, but it’s OK, it doesn’t shock me,” says 16 year-old Alvin off-handedly.

– – – – – – – – – –

With eyes of a deep blue, wearing a traditional clerical collar on a gray shirt, Fr. de Bucy has a charmed air. The young 36 year-old priest looks at the plans for his building site with great anticipation. L’église Jean-XXIII, which rises before his eyes, is being built on the site of an old Catholic place of worship which has become too small to hold the multitude of new participants, in particular the young people. It must be said that the practice of religion has the wind at its back in these districts.

Islam, Judaism, Protestantism, and Catholicism are experiencing a revival amid the towers and barriers of the difficult housing projects. Within a few hundred yards of the building site, behind the Léo-Lagrange park, the Muslims have opened a prayer room, while on other side the Salafists have invested in the cellars of la cité des Indes. These places of worship are also silent.

Urban renewal

Among these and the others, coexistence proceeds without clashes, even if incidents occur occasionally. The old Catholic place of worship on which the future Jean-XXIII church rises was the victim of an attack three years ago. A Molotov cocktail thrown into its rooms caused only slight damage, but aroused considerable emotion. “At the time, all of the religious communities, with the Muslims first, supported us,” remembers Fr. de Bucy.

Today the situation is largely peaceful. “Our districts underwent an important policy of urban renewal,” the mayor (UMP) of Sartrouville, Pierre Fond, is happy to say. “Today they are starting to be sought by new tenants, because crime has greatly receded from the area.”

In the Plateau quarter, among la cité des Indes, la cité Gagarine, la cité Flaubert, and la cité du Tonnerre, the Muslim majority population does not express the least hostility towards the new church. On the contrary, the passers-by are even surprised by the absence of bell. “It is a little odd, a church without bell, isn’t it? “ asks Anounou, a 33 year-old Muslim.

A question which does not disturb Fr. de Bucy. Originally from Versailles, the young priest received his training at Val-Fourré, at Mantes-la-Jolie. Its church, located in the very heart of this difficult district, in the midst of the halal markets, did not have a bell, either.

Hat tip: François.

Aapo Puhakka has posted his translation of the controversial article by Mikko Ellilä. He has also posted a long and thoughtful response to and analysis of Mr. Ellilä’s article.

I find much of what Mikko Ellilä says repugnant. His statements about American blacks are nonsensical, apparently the product of an absolute unfamiliarity with the nature of American culture.

But what will happen next is that outrage will be turned against Mr. Ellilä, instead of against the thought police of the Finnish state and the EU.

We must not lose sight of what we are defending here. We are not defending what Mikko Ellilä wrote; we are defending his right to publish it. The issue is not the content of his writing; it is the process of his being summoned to answer for it.

I’ve read the whole thing, and Mr. Ellilä is obviously being deliberately provocative in the way he presents his views. But there are no incitements to crime, and no defamation of individuals. Nothing in his piece warrants the intrusion of the government. If the law allows the police to summon him on the basis of this article, “then the law is a ass.”

Remember this: the same people who want to silence Mikko Ellilä for saying “Negroes have a lower median IQ than whites” consider the statement “Islam is dangerous” to be equally bad. The silencing of “offensive” speech will not stop with outright racism — the entire Counterjihad becomes vulnerable if we meekly accept the abomination of censorship.

Here are some excerpts from Mr. Puhakka’s translation of Mikko Ellilä’s article, “Society Consists of People”. It’s extremely politically incorrect. I’ve modified the translation slightly, but only to conform with standard American usage.

In the discussion of immigration and multiculturalism many people seem to forget that every society and culture is created and upheld by certain kind of people.

European culture and modern western society is created by white people.

One could see in Africa societies and cultures created by black people, where there were no railroads, airplanes, streets with asphalt, stone houses, electricity, telephone, television, etc.

People of the Middle East have created a culture of desert-living tribes, that is so-called Islamic culture.

People of East Asia, mostly Japanese and Chinese, created in their own times a society where the standard of living and technical ability was for centuries higher than in Europe.

The collectivistic, authoritarian way of thinking, typical for Asians, leads however to stagnation, as a result of which, for example, America and Africa were conquered by Europeans, not by Japanese or Chinese.

Rationalism and individualism is typical of the European way of thinking and a necessary result of these traits is the support of private property and a free market-economy. For this reason the industrial revolution happened in Europe and not in Asia.

Asians can live in a European society, because they have no problems living by its rules. In their own societies Asians don’t want to implement values of European enlightenment philosophy, because they really see no use for them.

Asians think, that for example freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of association and gathering and free elections are unnecessary nonsense. Idolatry of leaders as absolutist authorities, support of the official ideology of state without criticism, and persecution of dissidents are normal, self-evident and necessary things for Asian people.

– – – – – – – – – –

Robberies, rapes, nepotism, corruption, clan-warfare, superstition, and murders committed on a momentary impulse are normal things for African people. If Africans form a majority in some country outside of Africa, this country is transformed into Africa. This has happened for example in Haiti, where voodoo-culture and a society torn by bolshevistic anarchy strangely reminds us of African culture and society.

After this are sections about the deficiencies of intelligence among Africans. But interspersed with those observations are some very commonsensical passages:

…There is a positive correlation between intelligence and standard of living. Causality goes in both directions: On the one hand an increase in the standard of living increases the intelligence level by decreasing for example brain-damage caused by malnutrition in the population; on the other hand a more intelligent population can create a higher standard of living for them. When the mean intelligence level decreases, the standard of living of the country decreases. Stupid people can’t keep up a high standard of living, because the standard of living is the same as the real value of the sum of all production of items and services per capita; stupid people can’t keep up as valuable a total production of commodities as intelligent people, so a more stupid society has a lower standard of living.

…In Finland immigrants commit more than 20 times as many rapes per capita than Finnish people. The more immigrants from Africa and Middle-East are in Europe, the more crime there is in Europe. If all non-white people nowadays living in Europe would move back to their countries of origin, the crime rate would decrease several tens of percents in Europe.

That last paragraph reminds us of the pernicious unintended consequences of Multiculturalism. Mr. Ellilä is stating a plain fact: that the increase of immigration from poor Third World countries is invariably accompanied by an increase in violent crime. When this information is deemed racist, and is suppressed or denied — as it is throughout Europe — the perverse effect is to cause ordinary people to draw their own racist conclusions, in the absence of any honest discussion about what is actually happening.

Mikko Ellilä’s more obnoxious assertions can’t be refuted when all reasonable discussion of them is foreclosed.

Vasarahammer wrote me this morning and said this:

For the record, Mikko’s case has not been mentioned in the MSM yet. Not a single word.

In the comments to one of last night’s posts Ethnocentrist responded (on the wrong thread) to my most recent post on Mikko Ellilä. Since he and other readers may not find my response there, I’m re-posting it here.

Ethnocentrist said:

I want to make my personal opinion clear: I do not credit any of the theories that assert a genetically-based racial component to intelligence.

Baron, do you also not credit any theories that assert a genetically-based racial component to physical abilities? Silly PC Baron, the evidence does not support your unfounded “non-bias”.

My response:

Ethnocentrist:

First of all, you’re on the wrong thread.

Secondly, your sneering response jumps to conclusions.

I don’t credit those theories because I have studied them extensively. I didn’t want to lengthen my post by discussing it, but I minored in Anthropology (with a major in Math) at college, and during my senior year I wrote a term paper in Physical Anthropology on race and intelligence, concentrating on the works of Arthur Jensen.

In my paper I wrote that the question of a racial component for intelligence was not fully answered, but that the evidence did not warrant Professor Jensen’s conclusions.

Not long after I wrote my paper, honest discussion on such topics within the academy was shut down completely.

So when I said, “I do not credit any of the theories,” I was maintaining that the evidence does not support the hypothesis. I have not seen any additional evidence in the intervening 35 years to change that conclusion.

Of course, in the intervening 35 years, the reigning orthodoxy has forbidden the gathering of more evidence. That’s why the topic is still open.

And that’s part of our problem.

[Nothing follows.]

Here’s my translation of an article from today’s edition of the Danish newspaper Ekstra Bladet:

Burka precludes cash benefits in Århus

Women wearing burkas are not considered available for the jobs market, says Århus councilman

Women who wear the burka will exclude themselves from receiving cash benefits in Århus.

So says the town councillar for employment, Gert Bjerregaard (V) [V=Venstre, the ruling political party — BB] to Morgenavisen Jyllands-Posten.

In order to receive cash benefits, one must be available for the jobs market. However, someone who goes about in a burka makes herself unavailable. Nor will the Århus local authority make local jobs available for burka-wearing women, says the councillor. Even so, the Århus local authority has not declared that it will take existing cash benefits from women on the grounds of wearing such clothing, he declares.

“Somene who has chosen this garment has closed many doors for herself, in terms of obtaining employment. She sends a clear signal that she is not in the Danish jobs market, and it is important for me to stay firm, to choose to stand firm on this, that she cannot then receive cash benefits from the Århus local authority,” says Gert Bjerregaard.

Hat tip: Pulfine.

[Nothing follows.]