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.

Helle Klein, a former member of the board of the Swedish Social Democratic Youth League (SSU) and until recently the political editor-in-chief of Aftonbladet, Sweden’s largest newspaper, has stated that “If the debate is that there are problems caused by refugees and immigrants, we don’t want it.”

Sweden is in the midst of the worst rape wave in Scandinavian history. Judging from numbers from neighboring countries Norway and Denmark, this is probably intimately related to recent mass immigration, especially from Muslim countries. Now, if you have a problem that you suspect may be largely caused by immigration, but you have already decided that these policies shouldn’t be questioned, what to do?

Well, you can blame it on… the weather! According to this article from Aftonbladet, with the title “Summertime — rape time”, the huge spike in rapes during the summer is caused by the nice, warm weather, which brings out all those hormones. The official number of rape charges has more than quadrupled in the space of just one generation, and Swedish women in some areas of the country are increasingly afraid to move around outdoors. If this is because of the warm weather, I suppose the Scandinavian rape wave is caused by global warming?

The ethnologist Maria Bäckman, in her study “Whiteness and gender,” has followed a group of Swedish girls in the suburb of Rinkeby. Several of them had dyed their hair to avoid sexual harassment. Being blond involves old men staring at you and boys calling you “whore.” According to author Bruce Bawer, the city of Stockholm carried out a survey of ninth-grade boys in the predominantly Muslim suburb of Rinkeby. In the last year, 17% of the boys had forced someone to have sex and 31% had hurt someone so badly that the victim required medical care. Sensational statistics — but they appear to have been published only in a daily news sheet that is distributed free on the subways. The mainstream media ignored it.

Immigrant Rape Wave in Sweden
– – – – – – – – – –
“It is not as wrong raping a Swedish girl as raping an Arab girl,” says Hamid. “The Swedish girl gets a lot of help afterwards, and she had probably f***ked before, anyway. But the Arab girl will have problems with her family. For her, being raped is a source of shame. It is important that she retains her virginity until she marries.” It was no coincidence that it was a Swedish girl that was gang raped in Rissne. “It is far too easy to get a Swedish whore…… girl, I mean;” says Hamid, and laughs over his own choice of words. “Many immigrant boys have Swedish girlfriends when they are teenagers. But when they get married, they get a proper woman from their own culture who has never been with a boy. That’s what I am going to do. I don’t have too much respect for Swedish girls. I guess you can say they get f***ked to pieces.”

A note from Baron Bodissey

When I was searching for photos of Helle Klein, I found the interesting one shown below on a website called Sweden’s Young Muslims. It was taken at a demonstration from last November (I think).

The sign reads, approximately: “A Sweden for All! Stop the Nazistic Violence!”

The header on the “About Me” sidebar on Ms. Klein’s Aftonbladet page says, “Political and personal but never private.”

As you may recall, back in March we reported on a little tantrum thrown by the autonomer of Nørrebro, a district of Copenhagen. It seems the youths were a little bit upset and found it necessary to burn some cars and throw things at the police in order to express their displeasure.

“Autonomer” is the Danish term for a hodge-podge of anarchists, Trotskyites, radical Greens and all the other players we see in the anti-war and anti-globalist demonstrations that erupt periodically across the Western world. Here in the USA it would be International ANSWER filling the same role.

They are called autonomer because they reckon themselves to be autonomous, i.e. not part of the patriarchal capitalist warmongering fascistic country they happen to be living in. They are the true independent free-thinking progressive idealists of our time.

Which is very interesting, because they threw that incendiary tantrum back in March because they were finally evicted by the police from Ungdomshuset (the Youth House), a house in Nørrebro where they had been squatting for years. They didn’t own it, but since they had been living there so long, and since property is an outmoded concept of bourgeois capitalism, they considered it theirs.

And how do these youths support themselves? Why, they are recipients of government welfare benefits, of course!

Some “autonomy”.

Anyway, although Ungdomshuset is gone (it has since been torn down), it has not been forgotten, and from the point of view of the victims, the fascist crimes against the progressive youth of Copenhagen still require an accounting.

Mikkel Høgh, who blogs in English, had this report last week on the latest from the autonomer:

I just saw the critically acclaimed Danish move ‘Drabet’ (Drab is the term for voluntary manslaughter in Danish) by Per Fly, one of our best filmmakers here in Denmark, and it is one of those films that makes you think. The film revolves around the killing of a Danish police officer by a group of left-wing “activists”… The film contains a scene where one of the characters tries to relativise the killing of the policeman to Iraqi children struck with cancer due to American usage of depleted uranium weapons and other similar stories. And it is just such a callous thing to say — or even think. It is just wrong on so many levels, I don’t even know where to begin. Just today, I read that the young “activists” from the late “Ungdomshuset” that was torn down earlier this year are contemplating real terrorism. In an article I found on Politiken, one of them says the following:

People are fed up with militant action that does not work. It would be more effective with assault, firebombings or kidnappings. It could be a police officer, Ritt Bjerregaard or Ruth Evensen.

And their apologist lawyer states:

The young people do not feel that they are being listened to. They are becoming desperate and that is dangerous.

[…]

I distance myself from violence when ever I am asked. But I will not preach non-violence to the young people. That is not my job.

– – – – – – – – – –
I distance myself from violence when ever I am asked.

Does that mean you stay close to violence whenever no one asks you about it? Do you think there’s anything wrong with it? Or are such judgments irrelevant and antiquated to a free-thinking modern progressive like yourself?

That is not my job.

No, it isn’t. If a Danish lawyer is anything like an American lawyer, your job is to make large quantities of money while paying little or no attention to ethical behavior or the truth.

Nor is it the job of the schools, the government, the media or any other organized entity of modern society.

“Preaching” — a.k.a. moral education — is a no-no. It has been ruled off the turf. Different strokes for different folks, whatever floats your boat, etc., etc. Who are we to judge?

And so we have Danish punks publishing a call to murder in a major organ of the press, and no one bats an eye.

At the same time, a politician in Sweden has been convicted of ethnic agitation for speaking the plain truth.

If only I could make like General Cornwallis at Yorktown, and summon up the band to play “The World Turned Upside Down”.

The Manhattan Institute has a website worth visiting. Coming across it is timely, considering all the emails a faithful reader has been forwarding on to us about the peccadilloes of our favorite school, the College of William and Mary.

His latest email was a copy of a Wall Street Journal editorial from today’s paper. Called “A College Education”, the editors take notice of a rising wind demanding change in the university marketplace:

The merits of these disputes seem less important than the fact that there is now earnest and public discussion about the performance of college administrators, who, like career government bureaucrats, are usually adept at avoiding accountability.

This trend is highlighted by what the WSJ dubs “the William and Mary electorate.”

Any number of colleges and universities seem to be having PR travails these days, but this may be a case where the turmoil is healthy. The school year that is now ending has turned out to be something of a banner year for academic reform.

Consider the recent unrest at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia. When the school’s tour guides were informed in an email last winter that a century-old cross was to be expelled from the school’s chapel, alumni and students mounted a “Save the Wren Cross” campaign. Press releases, a Web site, and a petition that collected 18,000 signatures led to a restoration.

Nothing gets an administrator’s attention like the empty sound of thousands of alumni wallets snapping shut. Not to mention the ongoing erosion of publicity that renders a college risible in the eyes of the public. Who wants to send their child to a Saturday Night Live joke, full of po-mo capers involving the arbitrary closeting of the Wren Cross or a weekend devoted to the vocation of “sex workers”?

It seems that those who ought to stay in the closet are out, and vice versa. As it is now, William and Mary has stood tradition on its head and behaved obscenely in front of it.

The College is not the only institution of higher learning that is feeling the heat. Powerline has covered the situation at Dartmouth, but today the WSJ mentions it as well:

Stakeholders are suddenly feeling empowered.

That’s certainly true at Dartmouth College, in New Hampshire, where alumni have used a petition process for the board of trustees to elect four independent candidates in recent years. These “petition candidates” have run against disciplinary procedures that lack due process rights, speech codes, and an increased budget emphasis on administrative bureaucracy at the expense of academics.

The Dartmouth administration responded last fall by proposing a new set of trustee election rules that would have made these outsider candidacies more difficult. The measure needed support from two-thirds of voting alumni to pass but failed to get even a majority. The year ended with the election of a fourth reformist, University of Virginia law professor Stephen Smith.

Even more encouraging is the actual shutdown of one of the most politically correct colleges we’ve ever had to endure:

[M]arket forces [have] prevailed. Antioch College in Ohio — which became famous for sundry curious radicalisms like requiring verbal consent before two students may kiss — was designed to accommodate 2,700 students, but will soon close its doors indefinitely. Its enrollment, now around 300, is no longer sustainable.

Now we have the new website called Minding the Campus sponsored by the Manhattan Institute. According to its mission statement,

Minding the Campus is dedicated to the revival of intellectual pluralism and the best traditions of liberal education at America’s universities. Look here for the most current thoughts and opinions on American academic reform.

Meanwhile, if you (as does the Baron) love to be filled with loathing, here are some more links sent by our reader regarding William and Mary’s rotund President Nichol:

This one airs the concerns of two members of the Philosophy Department regarding their Esteemed Leader’s hubris:

The destructive effects of ineffectual college boards was national news this past year. Gene Nichol, president of the College of William and Mary, without consulting the college’s board, removed a cross from public display in the Wren Chapel. Why did he do that? Because the board does not hold him to account. Because they follow instead of lead, just as [Ross Mugler, a board member at Old Dominion University] says.

Does anyone really believe that Nichol would have removed the cross had he felt the watchful eyes of a conscientious board upon him? The president feels beholden to no one within the structure of the college — his behavior makes that plain. So, yes, taxpayers of the commonwealth should be alarmed.

The Wren cross, however, was small potatoes. The destruction wrought by unchecked power runs far deeper. The most significant casualty has been academic standards. The provost (the highest academic officer at the college) and the dean of Arts and Sciences appear to march in step with Nichol’s drum, having taken calculated steps to make academic standards subservient to an ideology of sensitivity.

– – – – – – – – – –

Echoing Nichol’s excuse for having removed the Wren cross, the administration now ranks academic excellence beneath the president’s hospitality norm. Students and faculty must feel, above all else, welcomed. And, as the administration recently informed us, that means that students and faculty must not feel certain sorts of anxiety. They must be protected from the threat of genuine standards, the fear of knowing that they might fail.

That is why the administration, just before the summer break when oversight is at an annual minimum, informed the philosophy department at William and Mary that it is being placed in receivership. The current chair of the department (who publicly refused to support Nichol’s decision concerning the Wren cross) is being removed. A faculty member from the English department, who is a vocal exponent of the current administration is being installed as chair for the next two years.

The justification for all this? The hospitality norm. Here are the dean’s exact words: “Excessive concern about standards, combined with a lack of mentoring or encouragement, has created an inhospitable and unsupportive climate for junior faculty.” The opposition between standards and hospitality could hardly be more explicit. Nor could the dean’s preference for diminishing standards.

The destructive effects of unchecked power extend still further, to civil liberties. The administration, in the absence of oversight, has applied its hospitality norm only when it suits. Those who are weak or those who claim to be victims are granted asylum. Everyone else, especially those who shoulder the responsibility of applying standards, are hardly made to feel welcome. Instead the administration has deliberately smeared the reputation of senior faculty in philosophy.

Charges of misconduct, leveled against a “bloc” of senior members, were publicly distributed by the administration. There was no attempt to verify the charges and no opportunity to respond to the charges prior to them becoming public. With enough insularity, due process goes out the window.

Most recently the administration has said that even talking about standards is evidence of an inhospitable climate. So now, in the name of making some (but not others) feel welcome, our speech is being censored. This is what happens when careerist administrators are granted unchecked power. This is why news that nearly half the members of college boards in this country are ill-prepared to do their job is indeed alarming. [Emphasis added]

President Nichol has an interesting, if checkered past. Can anyone tell me how people of this caliber are appointed to such powerful positions? Do they have a proven track record of raising money and squelching protest, or is this a paradigmatic representation of the Old Boy Network in action?

On August 4, 1996, Katie Kerwin, a political writer for the Rocky Mountain News provided a trail of bread crumbs which would lead from Tim Sullivan — at that time the president of the College of William and Mary — through the University of Colorado, to Gene Nichol and his present position as Tim Sullivan’s heir.

Back then, Sullivan was effusive in his praise of Nichol’s abilities:

“Nic is pretty much the person you see. He doesn’t hide his character behind masks. He’s very straightforward and has a wonderful sense of humor. He’s unpretentious and very, very smart,” said Tim Sullivan, president of the College of William & Mary in Virginia and former dean of the William & Mary law school where Nichol once taught.

And — surprise, surprise! — Gene Nichol succeeded Tim Sullivan as president of the College. Mystery solved.

Nichol is a politician of the most mendacious stripe. Look at his shenanigans when he was head of the Law School at the University of Colorado… you remember CU and Ward Churchill, surely? This is one case of similar fleas hopping about on the same dog:

Nichol was dean of the CU law school and had been a finalist for the president’s job. [Judith] Albino got it, and Nichol pledged to work with her. But when she lost the confidence of the faculty and deans, he signed a petition to oust her.

“I was trying to do what was in the best interests of the university,” Nichol said. “I wasn’t a ringleader or an instigator.”

On that January day, he stood up on behalf of the faculty and read a litany of complaints against Albino.

One of the regents, a Democrat who supported Albino, angrily asked Nichol about his own record.

Why had he renounced his membership in the Democratic Party and become an unaffiliated voter?

“I’m a practical man,” Nichol answered with a smile.

[…]

At last, Albino felt she had proof of the real Gene Nichol.

“Gene Nichol has shown me more than once that he is capable of doing whatever is necessary to promote Gene Nichol,” said Albino.

Her allies agree.

“I went from liking him very much to not trusting him at all,” said former CU regent Norwood Robb. “I believe he’s Machiavellian.”

For a philosopher, Nichol obviously didn’t spend a whole lot of time studying ethics; either that, or he studied them in order to understand which precepts he could safely flout:

“I’m a practical man,” Nichol answered with a smile.

What’s Spanish for hets mot folkgrupp?

Maybe it’s agitación contra un grupo étnico, incitacion contra una gente, or even difamación de la raza.

But whatever it is, Conan el Bárbaro, a.k.a. California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, is learning the consequences of insulting an ethnic group.

When Arnold came to office in 2003, he seemed to jettison his “conservative” principles quickly enough. We watched him throw them off of the back of the sled one by one as it became evident that the governor of a state as big as California remains a 98-pound weakling unless he learns to grease the wheels of patronage and compromise with the existing political machine.

But suddenly he seems to have recovered his barbarian cojones. Yesterday he was willing to draw the ire of California’s largest ethnic voting bloc, one which will soon enough form an actual majority in the state:

Some Hispanic leaders lashed out Friday at California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s advice that immigrants should “turn off the Spanish television set” to better learn how to speak English.

Schwarzenegger, who immigrated to the U.S. from Austria, recently told a group of Hispanic journalists that immigrants should stay away from Spanish-language television, books and newspapers.

“You’ve got to turn off the Spanish television set,” Schwarzenegger said Wednesday night at the annual convention of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists in San Jose, Calif. “You’re just forced to speak English, and that just makes you learn the language faster.”

Rep. Linda Sanchez, D-Calif., called the governor’s advice a “typical sound bite solution to an important issue,” said Jim Dau, a spokesman for Sanchez.

Sanchez said immigrants face the challenge of taking an ESL course because of long lines and up to a three-year wait to get into a class.

There was a time when immigrants to America acquired the English language informally. “English as a Second Language” classes were not considered a mandatory government function; if they existed at all, they were run by entrepreneurs for profit, or by fellow-countrymen acting collectively to benefit immigrants speaking the same language.

“Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger demonstrated his ignorance on immigration issues once again by perpetuating the myth that immigrants have to reject their old culture and language in order to learn English and assimilate,” said Brent Wilkes, national executive director of the League of United Latin American Citizens.

Why is this a “myth”? Why isn’t it a requirement that immigrants learn English and assimilate?

And no one is suggesting that immigrants “reject their old country and language.” This is a bizarre caricature of the position of the assimilationists. This is a free country; everyone is entitled to retain whatever he wants of his ancestral customs, provided that none of them are contrary to the laws of his adopted country. But when people enter the common culture and interact with others, the English language and basic American customs must be the norm.

Many years ago, back before the fall of the Berlin Wall was even a gleam in Ronald Reagan’s eye, I tutored a third-generation Estonian high school student in mathematics. Tom’s grandfather had left the old country in 1940 when it was overrun by the Russians, bringing along Tom’s father as a youngster.

When he was at school, or among his friends, or being tutored by me, he was “Tom”, but his name at home was Tõnu (I hope I have the correct diacritical mark on the vowel). The family strove to preserve its Estonian heritage, speaking the old language sometimes at home and teaching it to the children. All through the long dark Soviet period Grandfather held fast to the dream of returning to an independent Estonia, and finally realized his dream in 1992.
– – – – – – – – – –
But Tom and his father were fully assimilated Americans. Dad was a successful professional. Tom went to high school, played baseball, and watched MTV. Truth to tell, he found all this old Estonian stuff somewhat pointless and boring. But, being a dutiful son, he went along with the program. Later I always wondered what he made of the old country when he finally accompanied his grandfather on the old man’s return to Estonia.

The government provided no bilingual education for Tom’s father upon his arrival here. His school never instructed him in Estonian. He never heard a word of the language spoken except by his mother and father and their friends.

I suppose this is another example of the inherently racist nature of American society, that it could treat newly-arrived European immigrants so shabbily.

But back to Conan and the Barbaristan of California:

“Spanish-language media plays the essential roles of providing the Hispanic community with the news and information they need and care about, and keeping them connected to their cultural heritage,” a [sic] said the Univision spokeswoman, who declined to provide her name.

“In addition to daily news from around the world, Spanish speakers rely on Spanish-language media for information in critical situations, such as severe weather alerts and health emergencies, and for other public services they may not be able to get anywhere else,” the spokeswoman said.

Once again: if they were expected to acquire English promptly, none of this would be necessary.

Not all persons of foreign origin agree with LULAC and La Raza about this issue:

Joey Vento, owner of Geno’s Cheesesteaks in Philadelphia, told FOX News that Hispanics won’t progress until they are forced to learn English.

“The Spanish people will never progress because of the fact that it makes it so easy for them to go to school or have anything and it’s done in Spanish,” Vento said. “You must be forced to learn English to be prosperous, otherwise you will be limited.”

And also:

Rafael Olmeda, president of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, said most NAHJ members would agree with the governor’s statements.

“Most people I’ve spoken to walked away believing that he was trying to say that we must learn English to succeed in American society,” Olmeda said.

Arnold left no doubt that he knew what he was in for when he uttered his ethnically insensitive remarks:

Schwarzenegger answered a question about how Hispanic students can improve academic performance, saying he was about to make a politically-incorrect statement.

“I know this sounds odd and this is the politically incorrect thing to say and I’m going to get myself in trouble,” Schwarzenegger said. “But I know that when I came to this country, I very rarely spoke German to anyone.”

Immigrants from Europe have always been treated differently from their Latin American counterparts. They are expected to assimilate easily and on their own, without having to be coddled and protected by the nanny state. Is this a racist attitude? Do we expect more from Germans and Swedes because we unconsciously assume that they are inherently more capable of learning and adapting?

In any case, you will find no phone menus that say, “Press 1 for Polish. Press 2 for German. Press 3 for Ukrainian. Press 4 for Hungarian…”

Surprise, surprise! All those honky ethnic groups learned English very well and very quickly.

It used to be that the same was expected of Latin American immigrants. But not any longer:

But the governor’s comments didn’t sit too well with audience members.

“I’m sitting shaking my head not believing that someone would be so naive and out of it that he would say something like that,” Alex Nogales, president and CEO of the National Hispanic Media Coalition.

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

The process at work here in the USA with respect to Latin Americans is the same as the one that has been going on in Europe for decades with Muslim immigration from the Third World. The EU is morphing into Eurabia as part of a conscious process, one which proceeds in near-secrecy, and about which the electorates of the various European countries are never consulted.

The Eurabian Union was created gradually and quietly by the élite and unelected leaders in Brussels. One doesn’t have to posit a single huge conspiracy to account for what has happened — it is simply a grand alliance of convergent interests, including large international corporations, the traditional political power-brokers, Old Money, and — not least — Arab petrodollars.

We’ve started a little bit later here, but progress on the North American Union is moving right along. Once again, it’s an alliance of convenience among different powerful groups: American businesses that want an inexhaustible supply of cheap helot labor from Mexico, Democrats who see a huge bloc of voters in the influx of new Latino welfare-state clients, Latin American (especially Mexican) leaders who can maintain their positions and perks only so long as their countries keep exporting potentially restive peasants to El Norte, and — not least — Arab petrodollars. The Saudis stand to gain from any actions that further weaken the American political system and erode our traditional culture of liberty and self-reliance.

The process is well underway, but it flies mostly under the radar. The current imbroglio over the amnesty immigration reform bill is just the tip of the iceberg. The spotlight is on McCain and Kennedy, so that’s what you see, but the real transfer of sovereignty is occurring very quietly in the shadows without involving Congress.

Needless to say, the push towards the NAU is being spearheaded by the State Department, and was launched with this joint statement in March 2005:

North American Leaders Unveil Security and Prosperity Partnership

We will establish Ministerial-led working groups that will consult with stakeholders in our respective countries. These working groups will respond to the priorities of our people and our businesses, and will set specific, measurable, and achievable goals. They will identify concrete steps that our governments can take to meet these goals, and set implementation dates that will permit a rolling harvest of accomplishments.

Within 90 days, Ministers will report back to us with their initial report. Following this, the groups will report on a semi-annual basis. Because the Partnership will be an ongoing process of cooperation, new items will be added to the work agenda by mutual agreement as circumstances warrant.

Through this Partnership, we will ensure that North America remains the most economically dynamic region of the world and a secure home for our people in this and future generations.

This ongoing effort is known as the SPP, the Security and Prosperity Partnership Of North America, and Dymphna has written about it previously. It is a little over two years old, and is coming along very nicely, thank you, although you won’t read a whole lot about it in the newspaper.

One of the reasons for its invisibility is the sheer mind-numbing hypnotic prose that it generates for its reports and press releases. It’s an official government initiative, so one would expect the boilerplate to be written in Old Bureauspeak, but even by .gov standards the SPP’s publications gain top marks for turgidity.

If you can wade though it, you can get a glimmer of what’s intended by reading a 2006 progress report (pdf format) from the SPP:

Canada, Mexico and the United States share a continued commitment to enhance the security, prosperity and quality of life of our citizens within North America. We recognize that the success of our countries is enhanced by working cooperatively. The Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America, which celebrates its first anniversary this month, provides a framework for us to advance collaboration in areas as diverse as security, transportation, the environment and public health.

[…]

North American Smart, Secure Borders. Our vision is to have a border strategy that results in the fast, efficient and secure movement of low-risk trade and travelers to and within North America, while protecting us from threats including terrorism. In implementing this strategy, we will encourage innovative risk-based approaches to improving security and facilitating trade and travel. These include close coordination on infrastructure investments and vulnerability assessments, screening and processing of travelers, baggage and cargo, a single integrated North American trusted traveler program, and swift law enforcement responses to threats posed by criminals or terrorists, including advancing a trilateral network for the protection of judges and officers.

Or this additional pdf document from March 2006:

The three leaders of North America agreed to advance the agenda of the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America (SPP) by focusing on five high priority initiatives:

The North American Competitiveness Council. Increasing private sector engagement in the SPP by adding high-level business input will assist governments in enhancing North America’s competitive position and engage the private sector as partners in finding solutions. The Council will:

• Consider issues that could be addressed trilaterally or bilaterally, as improvements in our bilateral relationships enhance North American competitiveness.
• Address issues of immediate importance and provide strategic medium and long-term advice.
• Provide input on the compatibility of our security and prosperity agendas, given the linkages between security and prosperity in a global marketplace.
• Offer ideas on the private sector’s role in promoting North American competitiveness.

It all sounds innocuous enough. Good for business. Good for prosperity. Good for security. Who could object?

But what do you notice in these paragraphs?

What I hear is the dog that didn’t bark.

There’s no mention of the United States Congress in these documents. There’s nothing about consultation with the people’s representatives. There’s no indication that any democratic process whatsoever will be involved.

It’s just like the EU. These things will be done by people who are smarter and better than we are, who know what needs to be done for our own good. There’s no point in consulting us: we’ll just interfere with a noble project in our usual benighted, ignorant, and racist fashion.

The “fast, efficient and secure movement of low-risk trade and travelers” will occur despite the opinion of voters. The SPP will decide who is low-risk, and those so designated will move across our open borders to do the jobs Americans won’t do and watch the increasingly large number of Spanish-language TV stations when they get here.

We won’t be Americans any longer; we’ll be North Americans.

How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world, that has such people in’t!

Jerome Corsi has written in WND about the blanket of secrecy that shrouds the SPP:

Geri Word, who heads the SPP office within the NAFTA office of the U.S. Department of Commerce affirmed to WND last Friday in a telephone interview that the membership of the working groups, as well as their work products, have not been published anywhere, including on the Internet.

Why the secrecy?

“We did not want to get the contact people of the working groups distracted by calls from the public,” said Word.

Ah, yes. The entire matter in a nutshell.

We don’t want to be distracted by the concerns of the public. The annoying lumpenproletariat would only try to interfere in a process they can’t even begin to understand.

There’s nothing here to see, people — just move along.

No need to be alarmed. No need to concern yourselves. No need to assimilate. No need for national sovereignty.

Just get back on the couch, click the remote, and watch any channel you want in the language of your choice.

Hasta la vista, baby!

We have recently been following the plight of Dahn Pettersson, a Swedish politician who is in the process of being broken on the wheel of political correctness.

Mr. Pettersson committed the mortal sin of uttering less than laudatory words about the ethnic Albanians of Kosovo who have settled in Sweden, and the Multicultural Inquisition has passed judgment on him. He will not be burned at the stake for his crimes, but the PC regime intends to cripple his career and empty his pocketbook.

My report yesterday concerned the verdict — guilty, of course — and the sentence passed on Mr. Pettersson. Since then our Swedish correspondent LN has been combing the newspapers and online sites for additional information. He has translated a very interesting item from yesterday’s Metro:

“He Has to Learn”

Kosovar Albanians satisfied with the slander sentence

SENTENCED. The politician Dahn Pettersson has been sentenced to 100 fine-units a total of SEK 18,000, for agitation against an ethnic group. The Malmö district court has determined that Dahn Pettersson, who represents the Alliance Party on the Burlöv municipal council, was spreading contempt against Kosovar Albanians in a petition in which he linked the availability of heroin to the immigration of Kosovar Albanians into Sweden.

Kent Wollmér, the municipal council chairmen in Burlöv, does not intend to demand Dahn Pettersson’s withdrawal in the present situation.

“His party has to take its stand to this question,” Kent Wollmér says.

Bexhet Kelmeni is of Kosovar Albanian origin and lives in Malmö. He thinks that it is important that it has now been established that Dahn Pettersson’s assertions were criminal.

“Dahn Pettersson has thrown dirt on an entire people. I have lived in Sweden for fifteen years and have been a Swedish citizen for ten years. I am ashamed that there are such politicians in Skåne,” he says.

Bexhet Kelmeni also says that he has been in contact with some two hundred Kosovar Albanians and all of them have taken offense. It is not only Kosovar Albanians in Sweden who feel injured, but also fellow countrymen in, for example, Germany and the USA, who via email messages have heard about the petition.

In fact, Bexhet Kelmeni is of the opinion that it would have been better to sentence Dahn Pettersson to take part in a course about other cultures instead of being fined.

“He needs to learn more about the Albanian culture, for example,” Bexhet Kelmeni says.

So the Kosovars would like to see the perp spend a little time in a re-education camp, eh? That’s what they do in Kosovo to people who insult Christians and Swedes, right?

Well, maybe not.

LN also reports that Aftonbladet, quoting the prosecutor in the case, says that Mr. Pettersson was “deliberately spreading offensive information”. In other words, if facts are offensive to immigrants, then facts be damned!

Dahn Pettersson has stated what many people in Sweden and elsewhere consider to be the plain truth, namely that the vast bulk of the heroin trade in Scandinavia is controlled by Kosovar Albanians. The Kosovars comprise one of the many exotic pieces in Sweden’s gorgeous multicultural mosaic, and, being Muslims, they are above criticism. Mr. Pettersson went beyond the pale, and now he must pay.

Even if the defamatory words are true, they cannot be spoken, because according to the prosecutor, ethnic groups cannot be described as engaging in any particular activity:
– – – – – – – – – –

“It is never ethnic groups that commit crimes. It is always individuals or groups of individuals,” said the prosecutor Mats Svensson to the Tidningarnas Telegrambyrå news agency.

Well, we all know that good qualities may be ascribed to certain protected ethnic groups. They are people of peace; they bring a different cultural perspective to our society; they have an excellent cuisine; their music and literature are of the highest quality; etc., etc.

But if it turns out that more carjackings are carried out by Somalis than by any other group, or that Pakistanis are overrepresented among those convicted of rape — why, then, these facts simply do not exist.

The same standards do not apply to descriptions of white people, or Christians, or Jews. These groups may be denigrated collectively by anyone, at any time. Their overrepresentation in any deplorable activity may be documented in detail. You may defame “persons of Swedish background” to your heart’s content.

If a white person commits a crime, his or her race is usually noted in news reports. But if race is not mentioned, then the perpetrator is almost certainly a member of a protected minority.

The particular unmentioned ethnic group varies, depending on the region and the circumstances. Here in Virginia, when the Charlottesville newspaper carries a crime report, if the race of the suspect is not mentioned then the tacit assumption is that he is black. Everyone knows that. No one has to say it out loud. Like any other taboo, it is unspoken but understood by all.

The secret rule becomes clear when you read a sentence like this in the newspaper: “The suspect is described as white, 25 to 30 years old, about six feet tall, and wearing a baseball cap.” That’s the only time you’ll see the race of a suspect mentioned.

Newspaper reporters are familiar with these rules. They know better than to describe any alleged assailant as “African American”. If they forget, their editors are certain to strike the offending words.

And God help anyone who uses the dreaded phrase, “of Middle Eastern appearance”, for upon those vicious Islamophobes the wrath of CAIR will invariably fall.

But back to Sweden. Not every person of Swedish background is willing to simply bend over and take it without complaint. According to LN, Ulf Petäjä, an expert on political science at the Univerity of Lund, is critical of the verdict. “The ideal way to treat preposterous ideas is to criticize and refute them,” he says. “In this particular case, where a group is accused of something criminal, it should be easy to discuss and possibly refute the statement with the help of statistics.”

And here’s an interview with a former Swedish journalist, as reported in the Swedish English-language news site The Local:

Svante Nycander, former editor of Swedish daily Dagens Nyheter, gives his view after local politician Dahn Pettersson is fined for hate speech. Pettersson claimed in a motion that 95 percent of all heroin that comes into Sweden comes via Kosovo.

“The ruling in Malmö District Court is damaging to freedom of expression. Many will take it as proof that the authorities are afraid of uncomfortable truths, and that lacking reasoned counter-arguments they punish those who speak plainly.

“When a member of the council asked the police whether Dahn Pettersson’s claims were true, he was told simply that the claims constituted Agitation Against a National or Ethnic Group. The law is becoming a hindrance for providing information about actual situations. Questions which have their basis in disparagement of a particular group cannot be answered.

“This is the result of changes at various points in the clause on Agitation against a National or Ethnic Group. The ban has developed in such a way that it inhibits not only prejudiced statements, but also nearly all discussion of sensitive issues that interest a large proportion of the public. Such a law thwarts its own purpose.

“Dahn Pettersson’s motion, and both the opinions and the claims contained within it, should be tackled in open political discussion — not with prosecution and punishment.”

Sweden is an extreme example, but it is not unique. The crackdown on hets mot folkgrupp has taken a grotesque and outlandish form there, but the process is essentially the same in the other countries of the West. Sweden simply has the most advanced case of the multicultural disease.

It is permissible to use statistics to establish evidence for discrimination against a protected ethnic group, or to highlight its disadvantaged state in our racist and Islamophobic culture. But any statistic that reflects badly on any such group must be suppressed.

The problem for the élites who would control us all is that suppressing information cannot change what people see with their own eyes. The “persons of Swedish background” who live in Malmö know the truth of their situation. They know what the Kosovars and Somalis in their communities are doing; they see it in action every day, among their neighbors and the members of their families. The rapes and thefts and murders committed by the immigrants are common knowledge.

The only effect that official denial can have is to keep the average person ignorant about how many of his fellow citizens feel the same way he does. When the organs of public communication are closed to honest discussion, and when the feelings of the populace have been criminalized, society becomes atomized. People go about their daily business bearing the secret truth of their own knowledge and opinions, but do not dare to give it voice.

It is small consolation that such an artificially constrained situation cannot last. The truth will out, but by the time it does the accumulated rage and resentment will cause an explosion, with a result that is difficult to foresee.

The Berlin Wall came down, and so will the Wall of Multiculturalism. But don’t expect it to be a gentle and joyful occasion like the one experienced by Berliners in 1989. Ugly and violent circumstances imposed upon an unwilling people will yield ugly and violent consequences.

A Lie cannot live forever. But when it dies, what will happen next?

I’ll let Jonathan Swift have the last word:

I said there was a Society of Men among us, bred up from their Youth in the Art of proving by words multiplied for the Purpose, that White is Black, and Black is White, according as they are paid. To this Society all the rest of the People are Slaves.

I reported on Tuesday that Kim of the Danish blog Uriasposten was being sued by a journalist for an alleged copyright infringement posted on his blog, in what was apparently a politically motivated attack from the left-wing media establishment.

Henrik has just sent word that the drama is over:

The legal confrontation came to an end today. Kim was on Danish television, being interviewed with the journalist in question and an expert in the legal aspects. After the show, Kim and the journalist hammered out an agreement in which Kim acknowledges that his posting the copy of the article was contrary to the law, and that in return he doesn’t pay a dime; i.e., no lawsuit either. That, so far, is all I know. I’ll get back to you when I know the finer details.

The money that was donated to him, as far as I understand, still goes into a legal defense fund for bloggers.

[Nothing follows.]

Pastorius, from IBA and CUANAS, invited us to be on his radio show last night.

He was a genial and ingenuous interviewer, and we enjoyed our discussion, which ranged from the Infidels’ responsibility in the face of Islam to Pastorius’ own 9/11 conversion: he was a liberal on 9/10 and a conservative from the morning of September 11th till he draws his last breath. His was an instant conversion and an irrevocable one.

At one point during his old liberal days, when sitting in a bookstore, he would grab a text of Chomsky off the shelves and sit pretending to read it hoping to impress some girl walking by. I’m not sure it ever worked, but what a charming story.

What is interesting in his conversion is that the narrative follows closely that of Neo-Neocon, Shrinkwrapped, Roger Simon, and many others. They simply turned away from “all that” and toward a harsh reality. As the Towers went up in flames, so did their intellectually fashionable and secure membership in the Liberal Club.

On the other hand, I don’t think this kind of change is commutative. I seriously doubt that any conservatives, blindsided by the horror of 9/11, saw the error of their ways and converted to the liberal point of view. Obviously, the liberal view rests on a foundation of “Blame America First.” That is not a foundation on which any conservative would choose to build, even when it is disguised as a willingness to be “objective” and above the fray when it comes to examining one’s assumptions.

Liberals appear to think that once assumptions are examined and found wanting, they will of necessity be changed. America makes mistakes and fumbles the ball, therefore America is not deserving of our allegiance. This is not an examination of conscience a conservative could make. Yes, our country does make mistakes; sometimes we even learn from them — and could do so much more easily and more frequently were it not for the interference patterns of noise generated by the chattering classes.
– – – – – – – – – –
Introspection demands space and a willingness to suspend judgment until it appears the facts are in. Liberals trip over themselves in their rush to judgments made on the basis of very few facts. They jump to conclusions, bruising themselves and the process of the intellect along the way.

Thus does Afghanistan become a Vietnamese quagmire within three weeks of our arrival there. Thus we had the projections of the brutal Afghan winter, the one in which thousands would die. Fortunately, global warming theories arrived in time to save that particular horror from occurring. And thus do we invade Iraq for the oil – as is obvious by the low prices at the gas pump. Or is it that the inept Bush administration cannot even steal efficiently?

A question for our readers: How many of you are 9/11 converts? How many were no longer ashamed of patriotism after the Towers fell? How many sought a way to express their sense of what it means to be uniquely American in the modern world?

Pastorius, as I said, is a genial and open fellow. He admits that the constant barrage of hatred directed toward him by those who disagree with his conversion experience has been wearing. Therefore, another question remains: For those of you who have found a way to stay strong in the face of such vitriol, what advice would you have for Pastorius on this issue? (See his blogs here and here.)

Last year, Memri carried several excerpted translations of interviews with Adonis, the nom de plume of a Syrian national who lives in Paris. These interviews didn’t seem to gain much attention at the time; trawling through Technorati and Google fails to bring in a large haul of notices about this man’s views of Arab culture.

Adonis was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in 2005. For his poetry, no less. It is remarkable because Arab culture permits the expression of Truth and Beauty only in its architecture. It has little use for the written word — except for beautiful copies of the Koran (in Arabic only, please). Music as an aesthetic experience has no place in Muslim society, as the Taliban demonstrated so extremely.

There is no history but Muslim history, and even that must conform first to the Koran. There is no poetry; Mohammed had no use for poetry. Hafiz, one of the great 12th century Persian poets, was persecuted for his work — as were many others. Fortunately for us, he persisted in the face of Arab repression and so his work lives on.

Adonis says that Arabic culture is extinct through its own doing:

“I don’t understand what is happening in Arab society today. I don’t know how to interpret this situation, except by making the following hypothesis: When I look at the Arab world, with all its resources, the capacities of Arab individuals, especially abroad — you will find among them great philosophers, scientists, engineers, and doctors. In other words, the Arab individual is no less smart, no less a genius, than anyone else in the world. He can excel — but only outside his society. I have nothing against the individuals — only against the institutions and the regimes.

“If I look at the Arabs, with all their resources and great capacities, and I compare what they have achieved over the past century with what others have achieved in that period, I would have to say that we Arabs are in a phase of extinction, in the sense that we have no creative presence in the world.”

[..]

“We have become extinct. We have the quantity. We have the masses of people, but a people become extinct when it no longer has a creative capacity, and the capacity to change its world.”

[…]

“The great Sumerians became extinct, the great Greeks became extinct, and the Pharaohs became extinct. The clearest sign of this extinction is when we intellectuals continue to think in the context of this extinction.”

That is our real intellectual crisis. We are facing a new world with ideas that no longer exist, and in a context that is obsolete. We must sever ourselves completely from that context, on all levels, and think of a new Arab identity, a new culture, and a new Arab society.”

[…]

“Imagine that Arab societies had no Western influence. What would be left? The Muslims must…”

Interviewer: “What would be left?”

Adonis: “Nothing. Nothing would be left except for the mosque, the church, and commerce, of course.”

[…]

“The Muslims today — forgive me for saying this — with their accepted interpretation [of the religious text], are the first to destroy Islam, whereas those who criticize the Muslims — the non-believers, the infidels, as they call them — are the ones who perceive in Islam the vitality that could adapt it to life. These infidels serve Islam better than the believers.”

Or so he says. But who wants to hear the truth about themselves? Especially a culture that practices taqiyya as a matter of course. Will they listen to this truth or will they bully or kill the messenger? Those seem to be the only choices.

Arab culture has two positions and two only: you are either the tyrant or you are the victim. Is this the reason for the death of creativity in this culture, or did the death of creativity leave them no choice but to scramble for one position — the tyrant, the guy on top — while trying to avoid the one down place in which the victim resides? This is not a culture with flexibility.
– – – – – – – – – –
The only game Arabs seem to understand is “King of the Hill.” And Adonis, this Syrian poet, knows only too well how that game inevitably ends: despotism and the rule of the bully. The only question is why he seems to be so disingenuous about the situation. “Arab culture doesn’t permit creativity.” This is something to remark upon?? When did it ever promote creativity? What did it take from other cultures except in the field of martial technology, all those bits of knowledge that proved useful to the violent expansion of the Ummah?

Arabic culture is sterile precisely because it doesn’t take from other cultures. Its sense of superiority doesn’t permit borrowing or stealing those things worth having.

This is not the case for the West. From gunpowder to macaroni to algebra, we take and we modify and we hand it back to anyone who desires access to it.

Thus is the world enriched.

In another interview, Adonis makes the following claim:

“Words are treated as a crime today. Throughout history, there has never been anything similar to what’s happening today in our Arab society — when you say a word, it is like committing a crime.”

Interviewer: “True.”

Adonis: “Words and opinions are treated as a crime. This is inconceivable.”

Interviewer: “You can be arrested for writing an article.”

Adonis: “That’s one example.”

[…]

“In the Koran itself, it says that Allah listened to his first enemy, Satan, and Satan refused to obey him. I believe that Allah was capable of wiping out Satan, yet He listened to Satan’s refusal to obey Him.

“At the very least, we demand that Muslims today listen to people with different opinions.”

I disagree that this lack of free speech in Muslim cultures is something new. In fact, real freedom of speech has been rare, historically in any culture, and this muffling of the very human need to be able to express oneself without hindrance is hardly confined to the Arabs. Beginning with the Catholic Church, the West itself is full of examples of thinkers whose controversial views were silenced. Hans Küng is only one of a long line of theologians who ran afoul of Rome’s “nihil obstat imprimatur.”

The interview continues:

“If we want to be democratic, we must be so by ourselves. But the preconditions for democracy do not exist in Arab society, and cannot exist unless religion is reexamined in a new and accurate way, and unless religion becomes a personal and spiritual experience, which must be respected.

“On the other hand, all issues pertaining to civil and human affairs must be left up to the law and to the people themselves.”

[…]

Interviewer: “What are the reasons for growing glorification of dictatorships — sometimes in the name of pan-Arabism, and other times in the name of rejecting foreigners? The glorification comes even from the elites, as can be seen, for example, in the Saddam Hussein trial, and in all the people who support him.”

Adonis: “This phenomenon is very dangerous, and I believe it has to do with the concept of ‘oneness,’ which is reflected — in practical or political terms — in the concept of the hero, the savior, or the leader. This concept offers an inner sense of security to people who are afraid of freedom. Some human beings are afraid of freedom.”

And some are so ignorant of history that they cannot see that all countries and cultures have been, to some extent, theocracies. It is absolutism that annihilates. Insistence on a lack of ambiguity is what kills a culture, and it is this insistence — or fear — of what cannot be known completely that seduces us into setting up closed systems. Islam itself is a closed system.

In the end, that is why it will not prevail. Yes, the demographics are there, but numbers alone will never suffice. It was not sheer numbers by themselves which changed South Africa. It is not the numerical superiority that will permit Islam’s renewal. And unless Islam renews itself, it will die — what is true on the cellular level remains true on the cultural level, too.

We have posted previously about the crime on the statute books in Finland and Sweden known as hets mot folkgrupp, which essentially means “defaming an ethnic group”. Needless to say, it’s only possible to defame third world immigrants. No one ever gets charged under the law for defaming Finns or Swedes — the latter, by the way, are now known in their own country as “persons of Swedish background”.

The latest victim of these ethnic witch-hunts is a politician in Skåne (South Sweden) who dared to make a potentially negative reference to some members of a protected ethnic group.

To make the incident poignantly ironic, Dahn Pettersson committed his inadvertent thought crime when he was attempting to draw attention to the plight of the homeless. Perfectly acceptable politically correct intentions are not good enough — Mr. Pettersson has veered from orthodoxy, and must be punished.

Our Swedish correspondent LN sent us this translation from an article in yesterday’s Sydsvenskan:

Burlöv politician convicted of “agitation against an ethnic group”

The Burlöv politician Dahn Pettersson of the Alliance Party has been convicted of “incitement/agitation against an ethnic group” [hets mot folkgrupp].

He was sentenced to pay dagsböter, that is “fines in proportion to his daily income” to the total amount of SEK 18,000 ($2,570).

Mr. Pettersson was indicted for hets mot folkgrupp because he had written a petition to the municipal council. In the petition he argued that the large number of Kosovo Albanian immigrants to Sweden led to an increase of heroin smuggling.

According to the district court’s judgment, Dahn Pettersson’s petition without hesitation gives expression to disrespect/contempt and clearly deprecates the whole group of Kosovo Albanians and not just the small number that devote themselves to heroin smuggling.

The law of “incitement against an ethnic group” is a restriction of freedom of speech and therefore each statement must be assessed in its context, the district court points out. Objective criticism (criticism founded on facts) is not punishable, but according to the district court Dahn Pettersson’s petition clearly falls outside the boundaries for a impartial and trustworthy discussion.

The district court has also taken the European Convention about Human Rights into consideration. The stated aim of the petition was to raise the question about the situation of the homeless in the Burlöv Municipality in order to provide better conditions for them.

According to the court it is obvious that disparaging statements about Kosovo Albanians were not necessary in order to achieve the desired effect. [Ergo — the Thought Police have declared their verdict — LN] Therefore the District Court is of the opinion that the European Convention does not prevent the sentencing of Dahn Pettersson.

– – – – – – – – – –

The district court has therefore sentenced Dahn Pettersson to one hundred fine-units, in summa

SEK 18,000 ($2570), for “minor agitation against an ethnic group”. Thereby the court goes entirely on the prosecutor’s line. The conviction can be appealed to the Court of Appeal [Hovrätten — second instance].

In his petition Dahn Pettersson asserts that the large number of Kosovo Albanian immigrants to Sweden results in an increase of heroin smuggling and homelessness. When the petition was dealt with in the Burlöv Municipality’s Executive Board the Right Wing Conservative Lars Johnson began to wonder about the contents of the petition, and contacted the police in order to determine from them whether the assertions squared with the facts. The police made the interpretation that it probably was a case of “incitement against an ethnic group” [hets mot folkgrupp].

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

Here are the translator’s concluding words:

What then was the blameworthy content of Dahn Pettersson’s petition? According to the newspaper Aftonbladet the blameful and indictable content of the petition amounted to the following verbatim passus:

95 percent of all heroin arrives via Kosovo, must you then wonder why the hoboes are increasing in number when we have imported this drug because Friggebo [female liberal idiot-politician — LN] gave 46,000 Kosovo Albanians permanent residence permits. After this mistake the heroin has flowed freely in Sweden and in Europe.

How is the increasing number of hoboes (homeless people) connected to the Kosovo Albanians? The reasoning is as follows: as a result of the already big and still increasing number of immigrants of Kosovo Albanian origin to Sweden, the easier to acquire and the cheaper the heroin will become, causing more persons to try and to use the drug. Many of these, and above all those in a weak social situation, will be hooked, fall out of the social pattern and in the end become homeless people. All Kosovo Albanians are not peddling heroin etc. but very likely 95% of all heroin smuggling and distribution in Scandinavia is handled by Kosovo Albanians. This is a well-known fact, first put into print by the newspaper Aftonbladet on February 29th, 2000. Kosovo Albanian criminal clans are spread out all over Sweden: Malmö, Lund, Landskrona, Göteborg, Karlstad, Kalmar, Halmstad and Stockholm.

LN has sent me more material from today’s media reports in Sweden, so I will undoubtedly be posting updates later on.

An exhibition in Rome is celebrating the common heritage of all the peoples that inhabit the Mediterranean basin. In other words: Italy, Libya — same thing.

According to the AKI article:

The works of twenty-one contemporary artists from around the Mediterranean basin went on display in Rome on Wednesday exploring through experimentation and tradition the identity of the region. “L’Uomo del Mediterraneo” runs in the Vittoriano complex until 8 July. “This exhibition is an utopia, of bringing together united in dialogue the countries of the Mediterranean, with their wealth of history and culture, too often divided by tragic conflicts” explained Maria Teresa Benedetti who along with Alessandro Nicosia curated the show which is part of the Lazio between Europe and the Mediterranean Festival.

Often divided by tragic conflicts — now there’s a weasel phrase for you. As if the Arab conquest of Spain were just a deadly natural disaster, a kind of human hurricane. These things just happen occasionally, you know?

The language of the artists on display at the Vittoriano complex in central Rome is experimental and seeks to launch a message which underlines the existing historic links between the people of this region, who all face onto a sea which should serve to unite different cultures who share a common if turbulent history.

“This is a choral work which reflects the utopia, but also the hope, that the forces of good will triumph and allow the miraculous emergence of precious common roots,” said Benedetti.

In other words, “Prepare for the Eurabian Superhighway, which is coming to you whether you like it or not.”

Here’s the money quote:

“It is certainly true that today, every day, [the idea of a common Mediterranean identity] is betrayed by the difficulty of spreading out equitably resources and opportunities to all the citizens of the Mediterranean.

Could he say more clearly that the Eurabian enterprise is the 21st century version of Socialism? “Spreading resources out equitably” means “taking things from Europeans and giving them to Arabs, Turks, and Africans.”
– – – – – – – – – –

“Yet there is a deep bond that united us. The light of democracy and dialogue — against the darkness of totalitarianism and intolerance. Building together the tools to fully express their common core will help consolidate the cultural, economic and political integration between the peoples of the Mediterranean” Marrazzo said.

The people of Europe never voted for integration with the Muslims of Africa and the Middle East, but they are going to have it shoved down their throats anyway, by people who know what’s best for them. Is it any wonder that the natives of Sweden and the Netherlands are fleeing to the Anglosphere in record numbers?

Fjordman, who just now sent us the link to this article, has this to say about it:

I notice that even at Jihad Watch there are those who question whether the Eurabia thesis presented by Bat Ye’or is correct. I have spent a considerable amount of time checking it, and in my view, her conclusions are perfectly sound. Louis Michel, at present a member of the European Commission, the EU’s unaccountable government, told the Belgian parliament that the European Union will eventually encompass the entire Mediterranean basin, including North Africa and the Middle East. The EU is actively working towards this goal on a daily basis, and spends large amounts of money on promoting the Euro-Arab Dialogue. The most dangerous aspect of this is how they rewrite European history books to erase any traces of the 1300 years of continuous Jihad warfare against Europe, Asia and Africa. The EU as an organization is so thoroughly corrupted by such pro-Islamic sentiments that it is simply impossible to fight the Islamization of Europe without getting rid of the EU. This is an example, clearly encouraged by the EU, of an Eurabian art exhibition in Rome dedicated to celebrating a “common Mediterranean identity,” whatever that is.

My post last week about Q-ships and the Danica White generated some interesting comments and emails.

Commenter Greg B. had this to say:

In combating piracy, “Q-ships” would be permissible under US Maritime Law.

This section gives full self defense rights against pirates and even allows aggression against them such as attacking them and taking away their ship.

This section permits the President to authorize any of the armed forces to provide weaponry for civilian ships (as opposed to the owners footing the bill). Paragraph (b), if read carefully, shows that the President can do it pretty much whenever he feels it justified.

So Q-ships would be permissible. But would they be a good idea?

Reader LP thought so:

A reprise of Q-ship style decoy vessels is a great and effective idea.

I’m ex-US Navy — I’m not an expert on global maritime law, but the last I heard, the Captain of a ship is the “supreme authority” when at sea in international waters, and is the virtual president of his own floating country.

To my knowledge, there are no prohibitions of any sort against him exercising the self-defense of his “virtual country” from any and all attacks, using all means at his disposal. I would really love to see this tactic put into action.

Deception, camouflage, and stabbing in the back seem to be the only way Islamists can achieve any combat success, so turning the tactical tables on them would be very satisfying indeed.

But Eagle1 did not agree:

Using a Q-ship for anti-piracy work seems to me to be dubious proposition at best. Having a specially outfitted vessel means the element of surprise might easily be surrendered if the same ship “trawls” the same pirate-infested waters too frequently. Further, these modern pirates use small teams of men in small boats, which may be easily replaced by the “pirate kings” without risk of more expensive ships or the “brains” of the pirate operation. The costs of the operation of an anti-pirate Q-ship would be high, and it difficult to think of any entity that would step up to pay those costs, especially if there are less expensive options, including increasing crew awareness in high risk areas (read the reports- most attempted boardings of ships traveling through the Strait of Malacca are thwarted by alert crews armed with powerful fire hoses). In addition, since many pirate attacks take place in territorial waters, there is the question of having the legal right to respond to what is felt to be an attack while in a state’s waters as opposed to being on the high seas.

– – – – – – – – – –

And we are not, generally, talking about U.S. flagged ships involved in these incidents off Somalia. I assume that most of the ship flagging countries reject the idea of armed merchant ships. Better for merchant ships to stay well off Somalia and/or to travel in convoys, escorted or not by warships.

Update: I should have made it clear that the scenario described below is a thought-experiment. I realize that arming merchant vessels is not currently possible, but some of our commenters and correspondents seem to think it is worth considering. So I am asking: What would happen if it could be done?

Let’s look at the situation from the point of view of the owners of the Danica White. Their first and foremost obligation is to their shareholders — they are obliged to take whatever actions that are necessary (and within the law) to safeguard their shareholders’ investment and maximize the return on it.

Assuming that the owners are neither heartless nor totally cynical, they are also concerned for the well-being of their crewmembers. Since the presence of a safe and healthy crew makes for the most productive use of the company’s shipping assets, the two goals are not generally in conflict.

The company sent its ship into what are known to be dangerous waters, so they presumably took the appropriate precautions — i.e. they purchased a hefty commercial marine insurance policy from Lloyd’s of London or one of its affiliates. The underwriters at Lloyd’s would have insisted on certain shipboard conditions in order to minimize the risk before they rated the insured and issued a policy.

So if I were a Lloyd’s underwriter, how would the presence of camouflaged deck guns aboard a merchant ship affect my rating of it? Which is more risky financially, an armed or an unarmed merchant vessel?

On the one hand, an armed freighter might possibly repel the pirates and prevent a hefty loss.

On the other hand, depending on the quantity and quality of the pirates’ ordnance, a firefight might leave the ship burned to the waterline and then sunk, a total loss to the company. Add to that risk the ensuing lawsuits on behalf of the dead sailors by their families — how much exposure would that be for Lloyd’s?

The insurance policy is undoubtedly written with a piracy limit, and a cap on any ransom paid. Part of the job of the “professional negotiator” would be to find out the ransom limit and communicate it to the pirates, so as to let them know what they can reasonably expect to get for their efforts. The final negotiations will probably yield a ransom payment which amounts to the ransom cap minus the negotiators’ fees.

In the end, Lloyd’s and the shipping company keep the risk at a manageable level, the vessel is recovered, and the crew returns safely to Denmark. The pirates are happy, the crew is happy, Lloyd’s is happy, and the shipping company is happy.

The downside is that consumers all over the world have to pay more for goods shipped by sea in order to cover the insurance costs.

Of course, if this sort of thing keeps happening to the company, the owners may find that insurance premiums go sky-high, or even have their policy cancelled. Then they may start to think about deck guns and Q-ships.

I don’t know which option is the best one. But I can guarantee you that the insurance company and the ship’s owners know how to find out.

Heck, there are probably entire consulting firms on the Indian Ocean littoral that make it their business to quantify the piracy risks for shipping companies and their insurers.

A little sideline in “professional negotiating” and a modest a kickback here and there from the pirates would help sweeten the pot.

Or am I being too cynical?

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

According to the latest report, the Danica White and its crew are still enjoying the hospitality of their Muslim captors. Stay tuned for the dénouement of this little drama, which may take weeks or even months to unfold.

A couple of days ago I received the following email from Henrik, of the blog Viking Observer. I’ve been delayed in posting it by our satellite internet troubles, but better late than never.

It concerns the legal difficulties of Kim, who keeps one of the most prominent Danish blogs, Uriasposten:

Uriasposten is currently under attack by a journalist and a photographer of the newspaper Nyhedsavisen. A couple months ago, he posted a copy of an article mentioning him as source for documentation of “false” rumors and accusation that MP of communist party Enhedslisten Frank Aaen had taken part in torture of an Egyptian caught in Afghanistan by the Soviets in 1980 (he was visiting as a correspondent for the paper of the young communists, and admits he “interviewed” the Egyptian in the notorious Pul-e-charki prison in Kabul about his training in fascist Germany — as a CIA-agent of course. The Egyptian was never heard from again).

Kim of Urias posted the picture of the article as an illustration, and beneath it quoted from the article, picking its accusations against him apart.

The problem now is that one of the journalists who wrote the article has hit him with a threatening letter, demanding payment of 5,408 crowns (about $1,000) within two weeks, and threatening a lawsuit if that doesn’t happen. He also says he insists on his right to sue him for further compensation on top of that, no matter whether the payment is made or not. The photographer behind a picture that was with the article hit him a couple days later with a pretty much identically phrased letter demanding another 1,500 crowns (about $250-300).

There are unsubstantiated rumors that the letters are part of a politically motivated attack — that the journalist in question was told to do it by Nyhedsavisen‘s political editor and the editor-in-chief. The editor-in-chief is a Che Guevara fan, by the way.

In response, Kim has so far refused to pay up, contacted a lawyer to get legal advice, and started a legal defense fund entitled “Knud Brix’s Vacation Fund” (Kim Brix is the name of the journalist who initiated the action). By day 2, the fund was at 10,000+ crowns (about $2,000) and is growing. This is money put into the pot no matter what. People have pledged several thousand crowns more at least if he does not pay up and lets it go to court. He has promised, if the journalist drops the threats, or if there is money left after an eventual case, that it will go into a general defense fund for bloggers.

– – – – – – – – – –

In a surprising twist, even the leftwing blogs have closed ranks with Kim (some more than others), and two of them have republished the picture of the article Kim is threatened with a lawsuit over.

It is also slowly emerging into the semi-MSM. Friday, far-left pundit Rune Engelbreth Larsen wrote on it and suggested people contribute on the website of the left-of-centre paper Politiken (I haven’t seen whether it’s in the paper version), and the Saturday web-paper 180degrees, a (European-, not American-style liberal publication — as a first in Denmark, it actually calls left-wing radicals left-wing radicals, for example). We’ll see if it gets any further.

The postings in question on Uriasposten:

• The original one on the article (the picture has been removed).
• The posting about the threats of lawsuits.

Henrik sent me a follow-up note yesterday:

It occurred to me that I should mention the following in connection with the case of Uriasposten. It goes to provide background.

In Denmark we don’t — unlike you in the US — have a “fair use” doctrine. Instead we have a copyright law that says that as long as you follow “good citation policy”, you can cite from articles. The only problem is that there are no guidelines for what that really is, and that such guidelines are only very slowly made by setting precedents in court. Especially when it comes to the internet and blogging, that has only barely been done, which makes this case — if it goes to court — so important. We need to set a precedents in law that, with luck, protects against such lawsuits against blogs in the future.

The fund, as of Saturday, was at 11,600crowns, btw (about $2,000).

I recommend a visit to Uriasposten. Even if you can’t read Danish, go boost Kim’s traffic in solidarity with a fine Viking blogger.

He doesn’t seem to have a PayPal button; as far as I can tell, there’s simply a Danske Bank account number for donations. I’ll ask Henrik to supply us with instructions in English so that we Anglophones can contribute to the cause.

Text corrections have been made! Thanks, Mackety.

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.

Norwegian Foreign Minister Jonas Gahr Støre recently participated in a conference with editors and journalists from all over the world on how to “report diversity” in a non-offensive manner, with Arab News from Saudi Arabia as one of the moderators. The Cartoon Jihad the year before had prompted Indonesia and Norway to join forces and promote a Global Inter-Media Dialogue. In June 2007 this was held in Oslo.

Agnes Callamard from free speech NGO Article 19 voiced her concern that it could prove difficult to implement the ideal of equal representation and visibility of all groups in society if we do not control what is presented in the media. Diversity — ethnic, cultural and religious — has to permeate the media if we are to succeed in promoting the Multicultural society. Article 19 is supposedly a human rights organization with a specific focus on the defense of freedom of expression. Callamard, its Executive Director, has according to their website “evolved a distinguished career in human rights and humanitarian work,” formerly worked for fellow “human rights” NGO Amnesty International, has been published widely in the field of human rights and holds a Ph.D. in Political Science.

Keynote speaker at the conference, Dr. Doudou Diène, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on contemporary forms of racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and intolerance, urged the media to actively participate in the creation of a Multicultural society, and expressed concerns that the democratic process could lead to immigration-restrictive parties gaining influence, and claimed that this has already happened in Switzerland and Denmark. Diène said that it is a dangerous development when increasing numbers of intellectuals in the West now believe that some cultures are better than others.

According to the journalist Jens Tomas Anfindsen, this is yet another sign that Europe is moving in the direction of totalitarianism. When the facts on the ground can no longer frankly and honestly be reported by the media, one is basically left with two options: Do something with the undesirable facts, or pretend reality is different from what it is. The first option is necessary in order to preserve freedom. The second option is the road to dictatorship and totalitarian rule. Anfindsen thinks “there are already clear signs that large portions of mainstream media in Norway have been working according to UN instructions” long before his conference. In Britain, leading figures of the BBC have proudly announced that they actively promote Multiculturalism. They don’t even need the UN to tell them that.

Also in 2007, Minister of Justice Knut Storberget said that the Norwegian Constitution Day, May 17th, is for “everybody,” and that it’s appropriate to demonstrate this by displaying a multitude of flags and cultures. It is now permitted to celebrate it by waving the flag of the United Nations, and there are calls for translating the Norwegian national anthem into Urdu, just as there have been calls for translating the German national anthem to Turkish. Norwegians are supposed to celebrate their independence by singing their national anthem in Urdu, by wearing the national costume of Ghana and by waving the flag of the UN, an organization that is actively trying to curtail their freedoms and subvert their independence. This would be the equivalent of Americans celebrating the Fourth of July by waving the UN flag and by singing the Star-Spangled Banner in Arabic.
– – – – – – – – – –
Nikita Khrushchev, leader of the Soviet Union after Stalin, said to a Western audience that “We will bury you!” He was an honest enemy. But school curricula can sometimes destroy a nation more efficiently than tanks, just as an enemy that does not openly state his end goals can sometimes be more dangerous than an honest enemy because it is more difficult to mobilize against him. The next Communism will not come from an open enemy armed with nuclear intercontinental missiles, it will come from a multitude of groups and ideas that may appear less threatening, but put together their impact could be disastrous. Multiculturalism, transnational progressivism, unlimited mass migration, NGOs, the UN, international law and anti-Western school curricula combined could create a situation where Western nations are no longer allowed to define their own laws, keep their cultures or defend their own countries. This threat comes from people who do not say “We will bury you,” they hide behind kind words about diversity and tolerance.

Marxists have been regrouping since their previous efforts failed, just as Muslims have been exploiting our inattention and complacency after the Cold War to infiltrate our society. I know Churchill viewed WW2 as a continuation of WW1. It is now less than a generation since the downfall of Communism in the East, yet another totalitarian ideology based on propaganda and media censorship is now raising its ugly head in the West. Is this just a coincidence, or is it possible that future generations will deem these two struggles to be somehow related? Did the downfall of the Soviet Union led to Communism being abandoned, or did it mutate into new forms? If so, will the downfall of the European Union, the EUSSR, lead to the collapse of Multiculturalism, or will the totalitarian ideology mutate once more?

I just watched massive and sometimes violent demonstrations against a summit of the Group of Eight (G8), involving the leaders of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, Britain and the United States. The demonstrators were presented as “anti-globalists,” but I’m not sure whether that label is accurate because these individuals are not against all forms of globalization. They actively desire the globalization of migration and legislation, and they are at best indifferent towards the globalization of sharia. The only “globalization” they are against is the globalization of capital. They are against capitalism, not globalization. That being said, they did at least prove that Europeans still know how to demonstrate. It’s sad, however, that Europeans appear to be more agitated over and willing to demonstrate against capitalism than against the Islamization of their continent.

If we assume that this emerging ideology of transnational Multiculturalism is a totalitarian ideology, we should remember that most totalitarian ideologies have a Villain Class, a group of evil oppressors that can be blamed for all the ills of society. If the ruling ideology falls somewhat short of producing the Perfect Society it has promised, this will be followed by even more passionate attacks on the Villain Class, be that the Jews, the capitalists, the bourgeoisie, etc. The Villain Class of Multiculturalism seems to be Western culture and persons who happen to be born with a white skin. Any problems will automatically be blamed on “white racism,” which will ensue more suppression of free speech for whites.

One of the hallmarks of a Villain Class is that its members can be verbally abused with impunity, and that they are increasingly physically harassed or even killed while the state seems in no rush to protect them from these assaults. The Villain Class is subject to public scorn and has de facto or even de jure less legal protection than other groups. They have their property and their culture stripped away from them, and any attempts to protest the policies or ideologies that are causing this will be met with even more repression.

Consider the case of Sweden. Swedish radical feminist Joanna Rytel wrote an article called “I Will Never Give Birth to a White Man,” for a major Swedish daily, Aftonbladet, stating things such as “no white men, please… I just puke on them.” After receiving a complaint because of this, Swedish state prosecutor Göran Lambertz explained why this didn’t qualify as racism: “The purpose behind the law against incitement of ethnic hatred was to ensure legal protection for minority groups of different compositions and followers of different religions. Cases where people express themselves in a critical or derogatory way about men of ethnic Swedish background were not intended to be included in this law.”

The wave of robberies the city of Malmö has witnessed is part of a “war against Swedes.” This is the explanation openly given by robbers with immigrant background. At the same time, more natives are leaving Sweden than at any time since the 19th century. But in the 19th century, Swedes left Sweden because of poverty. They now leave because of persecution, because their country and their culture is systematically being taken away from them. Yet the Swedish state is doing next to nothing to protect the native population against this violence. On the contrary, it continues the policies that created these problems in the first place and bans opposition to this undertaking as “racism.”

Doesn’t this mean that the Swedish state and its cultural elites are indirectly responsible for driving their own people away from their homes? I think it does, and I think future generations will view this policy as an example of pure evil. I also think they will find it difficult to understand how the Villain Class could in this case be the majority population, not a minority. There are several reasons for this, but I find it hard to believe whether this would have been possible without the incessant ridicule and demonization of whites and their culture that has now become an established part of the mainstream ideology.

Well, it looks like the Danes are going to pay the jizyah for the Danica White. Here’s a brief account from DR,the Danish equivalent of PBS (my translation):

Pirates Demand Ransom for Danish Seamen

The pirates behind the capture of the Danish freighter Danica White have, after several days of silence, submitted a demand for ransom.

It is still unknown how large the ransom will be, but the contact means that a professional negotiator can now attempt to gain the release of the five Danish sailors on board.

On June 1st the Danica White was on the way to Mombasa in Kenya with a load of building materials when it was captured by Somali pirates.

Vessels of both the French and the American fleets attempted to stop the pirates, but despite warning shots, they were unable to do so before the ship entered Somali territory.

Since then no one has heard from either the ship or the captives.

Note the key phrase, a professional negotiator. Maybe that doesn’t mean the same thing to the Danes as it does to us, but in an American context I would hear it as, “How much? Cash, check, or gold bars?”

Our satellite connection is hosed, and we are reduced to dialup, so my posting opportunities are limited. But I’ll have more to say about Somali pirates, Q-ships, etc. in due course.

Hat tip: LN.

[Nothing follows.]