Iran and Iraq — normally not on the most cordial of terms with each other — joined forces over the weekend to battle Kurdish rebels inside Iraq. The Kurds in question are Iranian, but are based in Iraq. At least thirty were reported to have been killed.

In other news, the United States government is attempting to ramp up its “wiretapping” powers to include internet communications that are not covered by current federal wiretapping rules. New targeted media would include BlackBerry, Facebook, and Skype, among others.

To see the headlines and the articles, open the full news post.

Thanks to Barry Rubin, C. Cantoni, CSP, DF, Gaia, Insubria, JD, KGS, Steen, Vlad Tepes, and all the other tipsters who sent these in.

Commenters are advised to leave their comments at this post (rather than with the news articles) so that they are more easily accessible.

Caveat: Articles in the news feed are posted “as is”. Gates of Vienna cannot vouch for the authenticity or accuracy of the contents of any individual item posted here. We check each entry to make sure it is relatively interesting, not patently offensive, and at least superficially plausible. The link to the original is included with each item’s title. Further research and verification are left to the reader.

“You can’t integrate people who don’t want to be integrated.”


The article below is from the September 22nd edition of Jyllands-Posten (subscription required). It describes a Danish woman’s well-meaning but fruitless efforts to alleviate the problems caused by cultural enrichment in the Nørrebro district of Copenhagen.

Michelle Hviid’s failure demonstrates that the standard leftist assumption concerning immigration — that integration is just a matter of showing good will and “openness” — crumbles with cruel results when attempted in the real world.

The woman described in the article is not particularly a public person — just a private individual who tried to do something active to deal with problems that others were only talking about, and expected that her friendliness and openness would be returned by the “poor excluded immigrants”.

Her experience shows that in spite of all the sweet talk and initial good impressions, reciprocity is not the usual the outcome — and in particular that immigrants are unable and/or unwilling to control what their children actually do.

Many thanks to Anne-Kit of Perth, Australia, for the translation:

Michelle’s Frustration

Integration: Michelle Hviid, 37, achieved nationwide fame four years ago when she created “Michelle’s Mission” — an integration project to encourage immigrants and native Danes to have dinner together. Now she is deeply frustrated at living in Nørrebro, one of North West Copenhagen’s ghetto areas.

This spring was the third time Michelle Hviid’s 12-year old son Benjamin was attacked by a gang of immigrant boys.

He and a friend were on their way home from school and were walking up Nørrebrogade [major thoroughfare] when 12-14 immigrant boys began circling them. Benjamin had seen a couple of the boys previously at a Tae Kwon Do club.

The group of immigrant boys managed to separate Benjamin and his friend so that each boy was surrounded by 6-7 immigrants. They started pushing the two Danish boys between them as if they were balls in a game. Slowly the boys were forced out onto the street. The traffic stopped and Benjamin made eye contact with some of the cyclists and drivers, silently pleading for help while being pushed around. No one came to his aid.

His friend was hit and kicked so severely that he ended up at the hospital emergency room. Benjamin escaped onto a bus, but his assailants followed. He had to jump off the bus and seek refuge in a shop before anyone helped him.

Crumbling faith

Benjamin has been attacked twice before by different immigrant boys in Nørrebro — the first time he was 10 years old, the second he was 11. In both cases the attackers were local immigrant boys. Now he takes a massive detour to avoid certain streets when riding his bike to and from school.

His mother, Michelle Hviid, lives with her husband and children on Thoravej in Copenhagen’s North West where they own their own apartment close to several ghetto areas. She is deeply frustrated about the attacks on her son. It has caused her faith in integration to crumble.

In 2006 she sought to make a contribution towards integration by trying to get 1,500 Danes and 1,500 immigrants together to share a meal. Danmarks Radio [State TV] ran five programs covering “Michelle’s Mission”, which created a lot of attention.

It proved easy to get Danes to take part but only 513 immigrants turned up.

Attacked in Kindergarten

Michelle Hviid’s faith in better integration also compelled her to enrol her three-year old daughter in the local kindergarten. It is situated close to some of the residential areas of Nørrebro which have been designated ghetto areas. But now she has withdrawn her daughter from this kindergarten.

“The staff were competent, but it seemed they were operating in pure survival mode with far too many children from low-income, disadvantaged and violent families — both Danes and immigrants. I don’t think my daughter learned or sang a single song during the year she spent at that kindergarten. My frustration peaked when one of the mothers attacked a teacher. My daughter witnessed the other teachers’ intervention to stop the attack, and she experienced the adults being very violent. I removed my daughter immediately and kept her at home until we could be offered an alternative placement.”

Only a day later Michelle was offered a place for her daughter in another kindergarten for children from Nørrebro. Here the children are picked up by bus and taken to the Deer Park [a large recreational park] north of Copenhagen — an offer which the family is very grateful for.

Too afraid to honk

Michelle herself is often frustrated when going about the neighbourhood.

“Often when I drive my car I find three or four 10-12 year old boys standing in the middle of the road, and they don’t get out of the way for a car, so I have to stop and wait. I am too afraid to honk my horn at them because I’m worried they will wreck my car or find out where I park when I get home. Normally I am a strong woman who can speak up for myself, but I choose not to honk at them.”

She mentions several other frustrating examples of how immigrants don’t live up to Danish standards — like throwing rubbish in the street and noisy behaviour.

“You have to watch your mouth, though. I don’t want to be accused of being a racist. But I live in a neighbourhood with a problematic mixture of inhabitants. There are ghettos in a lot of ways. When I get annoyed at young people running around and causing trouble I tell myself that it is not because they are immigrants. I’m annoyed by them because they cause trouble. But at the same time I have to say that 90 percent of the people who frustrate me because they don’t behave decently, … they are not Danes. I’m not annoyed by them because they are not Danes, but because they don’t behave like decent people.”

For the time being Michelle Hviid intends to stay put.

“I love my apartment and my neighbours on the same stairway. Six or seven couples who are our very best friends live on our stairway, and we often eat together. We have our own successful “collective” surrounded by the ghetto. I also really love my 180 sq.m. apartment which I have decorated myself. It has three balconies and a roof terrace. It’s also not a good time to sell; we would lose a lot of money if we sold right now,” she says.

Michelle Hviid finds it hard to suggest ways to limit the formation of ghettos. She thinks more should be done to engage the mothers of immigrant families in order to get through to the rest of the family, and to encourage the children and young people to adhere to Danish standards for decent behaviour.

Worried about integration

She is concerned about what will happen to integration:

“You can’t integrate people who don’t want to be integrated. What about all those who have built up this huge inner anger and who already feel rejected and ostracized? How do we pick them up? I do so want to be part of a good integration. I would like to open my door to almost everyone. That’s what I tried to do with ‘Michelle’s Mission’ a couple of years ago. I am sad to say that now I feel powerless. I don’t know what to do, or if I can be bothered to do anything at all now that I have taken care of my own.”

The political doctrine of Multiculturalism enjoys its current supremacy due to the confluence of commercial interests and those of the transnational governing oligarchy.

Large corporations — call them “corporatists” rather than “capitalists”, since capitalism as it is generally understood is not what they practice — benefit from cheap immigrant labor and from the downward push on regional wage rates caused by the influx of poor immigrants to wealthier countries.

The transnational oligarchy benefit from the shifting and churning of populations, which tends to dilute national identities and atomize the population. This makes central political control easier and less accountable, and the practice of forced ethnic heterogeneity provides the oligarchs with further incentives to erase formal national borders. The long-term goal is to replace the nation-state with supranational entities such as the EU, the UN, and various regional subgroups. This much- ballyhooed process is currently in vogue as “global governance”, made urgently necessary by the looming disaster of “climate change”.

Both the oligarchs and the corporatists have a vested interest in weakening the middle and lower-middle classes, since these provide the breeding grounds for political awareness and resistance to their rule. Mass immigration is the most useful tool available to accomplish this purpose, which is why it is pushed so relentlessly in the face of public opposition by the oligarchs and their allies in media and the academy.

Behind it all there is, of course, a corpus of true believers. Not everyone is a cynic, and there are many sincere communicants at the altar of Multiculturalism. I remember them from when I was a kid — they got all starry-eyed over UNICEF and the Peace Corps and exotic foreigners in quaint costumes. Later on, in the seventies and eighties, they celebrated diversity from positions of influence in government, the media, the universities, the charitable foundations, and private corporations. These well-meaning busybodies eventually delivered to us the culturally enriched rainbow tapestry that almost all Westerners are forced to endure today.

Somehow all of this occurred without the consent or approval of the vast majority of the people whose lives it so grievously affects. And now that a large proportion of the populace has awakened to what has been inflicted upon them, the essential question emerges: What can be done to halt and then reverse the multicultural juggernaut?

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

Our Austrian correspondent AMT sends the following essay concerning the experience of ordinary Austrian parents with the much-touted advantages of Multiculturalism in primary education.

The Joys of a Multicultural Education
by AMT

There is cultural enrichment and there is Cultural Enrichment. To explain this, my friend told me the following story:

Vienna is the city of multiculturalism in the old, positive sense. It was a melting pot, heartily inviting those who wanted to settle in this city in order to work, enrich it — again, in the old meaning of the word — and a great majority of them did. “They” being Czechs, Slovaks, Poles, Hungarians, refugees from neighboring countries when Communism was at its most threatening. The war in Balkans altered this enrichment dramatically: in the 1990s, the face of Vienna started to change. It wasn’t yet noticeable except by the most watchful people. And this is when Cultural Enrichment began. Crime rates roared, as did rape rates and “honor” murders.

My friend told me this story because her daughter, Marie, started first grade a couple of weeks ago. Marie cannot attend the public school near her house ever since her mother — on her way out from the voting booth located in a first grade classroom — saw that school children were taught Arabic. As a result, Marie’s parents chose a nearby Catholic school, which charges a hefty €145 a month, but which, according to the headmistress, does not accept non-Christians, with miniscule exceptions made for atheists.

Imagine my friend’s surprise when on the first day of school she heard the names of Marie’s classmates during roll call. Imagine also her surprise when she heard some of the parents talking with their children. The languages she heard included English, French, and Dutch. Henry’s parents are from Connecticut; Viktoria’s mom is from Texas, her father from Germany; Lily’s parents are Dutch. This is what she calls enriching: Viktoria is sitting next to Marie, thus allowing Marie to practice her English. Viktoria’s German is flawless. And this is what separates cultural enrichment from Cultural Enrichment: some these kids may be considered “immigrants”, but they speak the local language, as do their parents, and this allows the teacher to teach the curriculum without any “language” problems.

Contrast this story with the following recent newspaper article:

“Interpreter” needed to help out in school in [culturally enriched Vienna district] Meidling

Parents of children attending a junior high school in Meidling are upset. Not only was the school building still a construction site, but the number of migrant students was so high that one class needed an interpreter to be present during class.

Just last week, there were still workers on site in the school. However, more problems are evident in class 1A, where — according to parents — of the fifteen students with migrant background, a mere four have rudimentary German skills.

Two children speak no German at all, another student can write only capital letters. This class thus needs an interpreter to help out. Accordingly, the learning speed is slow.

The parents are desperate and worry about their children’s’ future. “This cannot go on. The classes must be redivided so that local children don’t go to rack and ruin,” says FPÖ Vienna council member Herbert Madejski.

To paraphrase Ralph Giordano: “As long as this cultural enrichment continues to stare us in the face on a daily basis and the politicians tell us that this is what we want and need; as long as schools need interpreters for nearly all children of non-Western background when they enter school; then for so long Sarrazin, Wilders, Sabaditsch-Wolff and all others are right.” And for so long parents like Marie’s have to work even harder to earn the money to send their children to costly private schools rather than tax-funded public schools.

It appears that the early indications are correct, and the Stuxnet computer virus is specifically targeted at high-value assets in Iran’s nuclear program, especially at Bushehr. The Iranians consider it to be tantamount to an act of war.

In other news, metrosexual British men are increasingly availing themselves of makeup products that are normally used by women, such as “guyliner” and “manscara”.

To see the headlines and the articles, open the full news post.

Thanks to 4symbols, C. Cantoni, DF, Freedom Fighter, Gaia, Insubria, JD, KGS, SH, TV, and all the other tipsters who sent these in.

Commenters are advised to leave their comments at this post (rather than with the news articles) so that they are more easily accessible.

Caveat: Articles in the news feed are posted “as is”. Gates of Vienna cannot vouch for the authenticity or accuracy of the contents of any individual item posted here. We check each entry to make sure it is relatively interesting, not patently offensive, and at least superficially plausible. The link to the original is included with each item’s title. Further research and verification are left to the reader.

Below is an interview with Cas Mudde that aired this afternoon on Swedish state media. Dr. Mudde is Dutch expert on right-wing parties, and he argues that the Sweden Democrats’ recent success was only to be expected.

According to The Geert Wilders enigma in OpenDemocracy:

23 Jun 2010… Cas Mudde is Nancy Schaenen scholar at The Janet Prindle Institute for Ethics and visiting associate professor at the department of political science of DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana. Among his books is Populist Radical Right Parties in Europe (Cambridge University Press)

According to SVT (translated by LN):

The high-profile Dutch politician Geert Wilders is closer to mainstream centre-right politics in the Netherlands than his hardline rhetoric about Islam might suggest, says Cas Mudde.

The interview is in English. Many thanks to our Swedish correspondent LN for recording the audio, and to Vlad Tepes for making the video and subtitling it:

A full transcript is below the jump.

Transcript:

0:00		What I mean is that in most European countries the radical right came into parliament
0:04		in the late eighties or during the nineties.
0:07		So Sweden is about ten to twenty years later than most other countries
0:13		and I think there are a couple of explanations for that,
0:16		which are, most importantly, immigration came relatively late.
0:20		Instead of guest-workers that came in in France or in Germany,
0:27		most of the immigrants are more recent, came in in the 1990s only
0:32		and were refugees, so, in a sense, the issue of multiculturalism emerged later
0:36		in Sweden, and Sweden also has a long tradition
0:41		of a very strong Social Democratic party, which have been fairly paternalistic,
0:46		which has taken care of the working class much longer
0:50		than the Social Democratic parties in other countries.
0:53		Q: Right now in Sweden, the strategy of the main parties
0:57		is to block out the Swedish Democrats from all political influence.
1:00		How fruitful is that strategy?
1:03		Well, it is not necessarily very difficult,
1:08		but it’s probably not very fruitful.
1:11		And what it mostly means is that they focus predominantly
1:16		at getting the Sweden Democrats out of parliament again.
1:20		But even if that would work in four years,
1:23		that doesn’t necessarily mean that the problems are solved,
1:27		because the Sweden Democrats are not the problem.
1:30		The problems are those kind of issues that the voters of the Sweden Democrats
1:34		perceive as problems, and if you just marginalize the party,
1:40		often what you do is marginalize the problems that these parties address.
1:45		And, as a consequence, this kind of strategy that focuses too much
1:52		on just getting the Sweden Democrats out of parliament
1:55		is in the long run hardly successful.
1:58		Q: But many fear that addressing these issues will only increase
2:03		xenophobic opinions.
2:06		Well, again, one of the things that the — kind of thing,
2:11		is that the Sweden Democrats have created xenophobic opinion.
2:14		But they’re actually the result of already existing xenophobic opinions.
2:19		And they came into parliament because a lot of the voters think
2:25		that issues relating to immigration and multiculturalism have not been debated.
2:30		And by not talking about it, these feelings don’t go away.
2:35		So, when you talk about it — this might lead to an increase
2:40		in terms of, like, the xenophobia in the debate,
2:44		and maybe even increase in the short run the success of Sweden Democrats,
2:49		but at the same time it might also satisfy quite a lot of people
2:54		who feel that now their voice isn’t heard,
2:57		and who might already settle for a compromise on immigration,
3:01		rather than just the Sweden Democrats’ solution to it,
3:03		which is fairly radical.
3:06		Q: When parties like this enters parliament, would you say that
3:09		that changed the policy towards a direction more hostile
3:14		to what’s in immigration or integration?
3:16		I think overall the effect has been pretty minimal.
3:20		You have to see that in the last twenty years or so
3:24		virtually every individual country in Europe has tightened its immigration law.
3:29		And there is not a very strong relationship between the success of
3:34		radical right parties and the immigration law that came out.
3:38		Mostly, mainstream parties react much more to what other countries do
3:44		within the European Union than necessarily what the radical right party does.
3:48		So there is a chance that immigration policy will be tightened
3:53		in Sweden, but there is a fair chance that that would have happened anyway,
3:57		even if the Sweden Democrats wouldn’t come into parliament,
4:00		for the simple reason that Sweden probably has a little bit more liberal
4:04		immigration policy than most of its surrounding countries.

The brouhaha over the proposed Ground Zero mosque occupies most of the column inches, but that doesn’t mean that other less notorious Muslim Brotherhood real estate ventures aren’t of equal (or greater) consequence to New York City and the rest of the country.

Wealthy Middle Eastern businessmen are quietly and continuously establishing partnerships and joint ventures in the United States to launch ambitious building projects of all kinds. Some of them — the Islamic centers and mosques — are directly related to Islamic da’wa, or proselytization. Others are simply lucrative, and serve the Muslim Brotherhood more indirectly by being profitable. Funneling money back to the sheikhs in Saudi Arabia and the Emirates is also useful to the Great Jihad.

Regular GoV reader Heroyalwhyness did a little digging and collected some information about the Muslim building boom in New York City. Much of the information below is derived from the SkyscraperPage forum. She sent this in a while ago, but I just got around to organizing and formatting it.

Heroyalwhyness says:

I don’t have anything concrete (pun intended)… but here are some dots — culled from construction blogs and financial papers to consider and explore further. We know Mayor Bloomberg is expanding his financial arm into sharia compliant finance, as is Carnegie.

1.		Imam Rauf and Daisy are planning to be in Abu Dhabi, September 2, 2010 (on our dime)
2.		Aabar Investment, a company controlled by the Abu Dhabi Government, is helping fund the development of a 73-story luxury apartment building and hotel in New York City, across the street from Carnegie Hall…higher than the three tallest skyscrapers within the area: Carnegie Hill Tower, the Metropolitan Tower, and CitiSpire… incidentally named “Carnegie 57” constructed by Extell, run by Gary Barnett Extell Avoids a Landmark, Sells to Abu Dhabi (first project in NY for this partnership) An Abu Dhabi government-controlled investment company has become the majority shareholder in Extell These are probably the same foreign men that Matt and Shvo were entertaining at Bagatelle a few months ago — supposedly they spent $90,000 on champagne at a brunch there with a group of Arabian looking men. Looks like it is paying off now that they’ve got these guys buying their units for $2,000 a foot. link “You can see Gary’s fingerprints all over the city in what has been done and will be done.”
3.		Carnegie Corp of NY’s scholarships promote sharia law, Islam.
4.		Aabar Investment, a company controlled by the Abu Dhabi government, has paid Extell for a majority stake in the project, and the deal could be the “start of several property projects in New York” from the Middle Easterners. The Essex House right behind the vacant lot is owned by Dubai’s Jumeirah, so maybe this neighborhood should now be called the Emirate?
5.		The actual developer of the GZ mosque, El-Gamal rose from waiter to real estate mogul with financial help from one “Hisham Elzanaty” Hisham Elzanaty is interviewed along with Ghazi Khankan providing the following description of mosques in NYC to a reporter from the Daily News in March of 1999: “When I came to New York in 1960, there were probably four Islamic centers, or mosques,” said Ghazi Khankan, a leader at the Islamic Center of Long Island. “Now you have over 200.”

“Here’s a point nobody is mentioning and one that is still confusing me — this organization has 100 million dollars to build this mosque. They are building it in a commercial area with a very low residential density that probably has a few families of practicing Muslims (if any at all). They say they aspire to be a community center akin to the 92st Y (which is built in a highly residential neighborhood) yet they continue to try to build it specifically here. If you have a 100 million to build this ‘community center’ you can essentially afford to build one anywhere in the city, in locations where this center might actually be used by people of the Muslim faith. Instead they keep pushing on building it right by the WTC.”

(via skyscraperpage.com forum)

The photo at the top of this post is just a tiny sample. Check out the original larger photos: Photo 1, Photo 2.

The city dwellers drop like flies
Delirium and madness in their eyes…

It’s worth the wait, surreal estate
Surreal estate, no time, no date
Accept no fake surreal estate
Design by fate, surreal estate.

— from “Surreal Estate” by Be Bop Deluxe

As has often been discussed in this blog, the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) is the worldwide clearinghouse for political Islam. This makes the OIC the linchpin of the Ummah, and thus the enabler and promoter of the Great Jihad. More than any other Islamic entity, the OIC merits the closest scrutiny of the Counterjihad.

In an article today in The American Thinker, Bat Ye’or has composed a succinct summary of the history, mission, and significance of the OIC. She begins with this overview:

The Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) is a religious and political organization. Close to the Muslim World League of the Muslim Brotherhood, it shares the Brotherhood’s strategic and cultural vision: that of a universal religious community, the Ummah, based upon the Koran, the Sunna, and the canonical orthodoxy of shari’a. The OIC represents 56 countries and the Palestinian Authority (considered a state), the whole constituting the universal Ummah with a community of more than one billion three to six hundred million Muslims.

The OIC has a unique structure among nations and human societies. The Vatican and the various churches are de facto devoid of political power, even if they take part in politics, because in Christianity, as in Judaism, the religious and political functions have to be separated. Asian religions, too, do not represent systems that bring together religion, strategy, politics, and law within a single organizational structure.

Not only does the OIC enjoy unlimited power through the union and cohesion of all its bodies, but also to this it adds the infallibility conferred by religion. Bringing together 56 countries, including some of the richest in the world, it controls the lion’s share of global energy resources. The European Union (EU), far from anticipating the problems caused by such a concentration of power and investing in the diversification and autonomy of energy sources since 1973, acted to weaken America internationally in order to substitute for it the U.N., the OIC’s docile agent. In the hope of garnering a few crumbs of influence, the EU privileged a massive Muslim immigration into Europe, paid billions to the Mediterranean Union and Palestinian Authority, weakened the European states, undermined their unity, and wrapped itself in the flag of Palestinian justice, as though this would supply some protective system against the global jihad, which it endeavored to focus on Israel.

Ms. Ye’or also points out what has often been noted here: the OIC is the nascent Caliphate, ready to re-establish what was abolished in 1924. It’s also obvious that Turkey is lining up for the privilege of hosting the new Caliph, thus re-establishing the Ottoman Empire at the same time.

By characterizing Muslim violence all over the world as “legitimate resistance”, the OIC supports jihad against non-Muslims in its various manifestations. This is a logical extension of the OIC’s assertion that its mandate extends to all Muslims, including those who form a minority within non-Muslim countries.

This extraterritorial ambition — to influence legal and political doings in countries where such matters are none of its business — is characteristic of political Islam. In this enterprise the OIC is aided and abetted by cowardly Western leaders, who are only too willing to grant the concessions sought by the Muslim Brotherhood.

As Ms. Ye’or says:

The Islamic Court of Justice has an international mandate and could try foreigners, both Muslims and non-Muslims (blasphemers, apostates, resisters to jihad) who have broken the laws of shari’a anywhere. Moreover, the claim by the OIC to be the guardian and protector of Muslim immigrants living in all countries that are not members of the OIC implies an extension of its jurisdiction and political influence over all the Muslims of Europe, North and South America, and the other non-Member States. This situation exacerbates the danger incurred by non-religious European Muslims, whether atheists, apostates, or free thinkers.

Islamic law is a danger not only to the Copts in Egypt, the Baha’i in Iran, and the Maronites in Lebanon. It menaces all non-Muslims everywhere, because the craven and/or bespoke elected leaders of Western countries are passive and supine in the face of it.

Read the rest in “OIC and the Modern Caliphate” at The American Thinker.

New Zealand’s Building Minister, Mr. Maurice Williamson, got himself into a bit of hot water by telling a couple of politically incorrect jokes referring to Islam. New Zealand’s Federation of Islamic Associations has written a letter to the prime minister demanding an apology from Mr. Williamson.

The news story posted below does not include the jokes themselves, but I was fortunately able to obtain them through samizdat channels:

1.		“What is the difference between Muslims and Kiwis? Muslims get to commit adultery and get stoned, Kiwis get stoned and commit adultery!”
2.		Mr. Williamson also quipped about the weather being “Shi’ite in the morning and Sunni in the afternoon.”

In other news, Senator John Kerry said that the reasons the Democrats are having so much trouble against the Republicans in this fall’s election is that the voters are stupid and have short attention spans. OK, so he didn’t use those exact words — but read it; you’ll see that’s essentially what he said. That can’t help but improve his party’s chances at the polls.

To see the headlines and the articles, open the full news post.

Thanks to C. Cantoni, DF, ESW, Gaia, GB, JD, Kitman, Nilk, Reinhard, RRW, and all the other tipsters who sent these in.

Commenters are advised to leave their comments at this post (rather than with the news articles) so that they are more easily accessible.

Caveat: Articles in the news feed are posted “as is”. Gates of Vienna cannot vouch for the authenticity or accuracy of the contents of any individual item posted here. We check each entry to make sure it is relatively interesting, not patently offensive, and at least superficially plausible. The link to the original is included with each item’s title. Further research and verification are left to the reader.

Below is the latest in an occasional series of essays by our Russian correspondent Dimitri K.

The Story of Two Revolutions
by Dimitri K.

Suddenly he made a face
As if his mouth burned.
The officer noticed
My large red-skinned passport…

I take it out of my trousers
Like a copy of the priceless item
Look — I am a citizen
Of the Soviet Union

— Vladimir Mayakovsky

In this short essay I would like to compare two revolutions, the consequences of which I observed during my lifetime. One was the Socialist Revolution in Russia, that occurred in October 1917. Please notice that half a year before that, in February 1917 a Democratic revolution occurred in Russia, so by that time Russia was already a democratic republic governed by the elected parliament. Of that revolution I know a lot, mostly because it was studied in Soviet schools, and also from my grandparents, who observed it in person. That revolution officially finished in 1992 with the collapse of the Soviet union, so it lasted for seventy-five years.

The other revolution, which has not finished yet, is the Sexual Revolution of the sixties in the West. Of that revolution I know less, but its consequences can be observed throughout the world, and are still here. That revolution was not solely sexual, just as the Socialist Revolution in Russia was not only or exactly about Socialism. However, if people ever use the word “revolution” with respect to the events of the sixties, they usually talk about sexual revolution.

There must be some reason for that. It’s probably because sexual norms were transformed the most radically. Some like to argue that it was about equality and freedom of women; similar arguments were often presented for the Russian Revolution. However, just like in Russia in 1917, the formal equality of sexes and personal freedom were already in place at the time of the revolution.

There are many similar features in the two events. I heard from my grandmother that in the 1920s in Moscow she saw demonstrations of naked people, walking in the streets with signs that read “No more shame!”. And in the USA, the 1960s were the time of the struggle for social rights as well.

For this essay I chose as the epigraph a few lines from Vladimir Mayakovsky’s poem “The Poem of Soviet Passport”, translated by myself. Mayakovsky was a great revolutionary poet both in the sense of his poetical form and also because he praised the Russian Revolution. Later he became disillusioned with revolution, and in 1930 he shot himself.

This poem was studied in Soviet schools, and as a child I thought it was about the greatness of the Soviet Union. Later I started to suspect that it was actually about something else, though most people around me still cannot believe it. The reason for our misunderstanding was actually because we grew up in a completely different time than Mayakovsky did. He saw the beginning of the revolution, we witnessed the end.

It is quite obvious from the works of Lenin, which we studied at school but could not fully understand, that the Russian Revolution was not about Russia. It was planned to be the beginning of the worldwide revolution, and Bolsheviks stopped short of their aim not because they didn’t want it, but because they couldn’t attain it. At first, they did not plan any Soviet Union, nor any Soviet passport; they rather wanted to show the red-skinned items from their trousers to the capitalist world.

Now consider the Sexual Revolution of 1960s. It had no Lenin who would clearly state its goals, but there was John Lennon, probably the most famous of its poets. Recall what he said: “Imagine there’s no countries” (Lenin: revolution cannot win in one country), “And no religion too” (Lenin: Religion — the most despicable of human superstitions), “All you need is love” (Lenin: all we need is the revolutionary party). According to Lennon, revolution should be driven by sex, not by a party; that’s why it’s called “sexual”.

The Sexual Revolution is now turning 50: this is the time at which revolutions ripen. What do we see around us now? Sexual minorities, the vanguard of Sexual Revolution, are now attacked in the streets of Amsterdam. Revolutions eat their children. Just like the vanguard of the Russian Revolution was completely eradicated, the vanguard of Sexual Revolution is under attack. It is not performed by an analog of KGB or any official authority, but the authorities are strangely reluctant to stop it.

When something cannot be stopped, it is likely to be a trend. Isn’t that the second phase of the Sexual Revolution? It is hard to recognize, because it is strikingly different from the first one. As with Mayakovsky’s poem, it does not look like what we expected. Just like the Russian Revolution deposed political liberties and produced the “aggressively obedient majority” (the term used by historian Jury Afanasiev), the sexually-liberated West suddenly stopped defending sexual liberties and somehow obtained a large mass of aggressively homophobic people. However, if we read Lenin carefully without prejudice, we find that he never ever talked about freedom, but only about the “dictatorship of the proletariat” enforced by the political power of the proletariat.

According to Lenin, the revolution was caused by social conflicts and desperation brought on by capitalism. If we follow this analogy, the Sexual Revolution was not going to increase sexual or personal freedom, which had been already achieved, but vice versa. It was caused by sexual frustrations and social problems in the world with too much sexual freedom and love replaced by money (capitalism). Its aim, though not openly stated, was the enforcement of sexual dictatorship by an organized majority which holds political power.

Like its Russian predecessor, the Sexual Revolution will inevitably collapse under its own contradictions, leaving devastation and a confused populace. It will happen unexpectedly, and very few people from inside the system will be able to see it coming.

AG is a Gates of Vienna reader who lives in southern Norway. In response to yesterday’s post about the systematic assault and rape of Western women activists, he sends an account of his own experiences, plus some news articles on the topic:

I’m a Norwegian Army veteran who has served in the Middle East, the Balkans, etc. I would like to tell you of a documented rape case in connection with your recent post “Peace Through Rape”.

This story was published by the largest Norwegian newspaper, Aftenposten, on 20 July. The information is obviously taken from an article on the website Ynet.com. Below I have provided the Ynet article plus a direct translation of the Aftenposten article. The grammar and structure of the Aftenposten piece is poor, even in Norwegian, but very symptomatic of the current standards of the MSM.

Notice how the Aftenposten article omits the fact that the victim was stalked and staked out before the crime. Instead the story is given a spin to emphasize how random this act was. Nothing to see here, just a horrible and random human tragedy. The communication advisor also obviously feels the need to emphasize that this was purely a random act.

It is further worth noticing that the woman was “on loan” from Flyktninghjelpen (The Refugee Aid), a Norwegian quasi-NGO with 2600 employees in 20 countries, funded more or less completely by the Norwegian government. While the work for UNICEF was pro bono, my guess is that she was still receiving a salary from Flyktninghjelpen. If so, the pro bono work was not so much on her own behalf, but rather indirectly for the Norwegian government. This is only my speculation, however.

This emerging story on how the Left is sacrificing their own women for “the cause” is maybe the case that will crush the moral image of both the Palestinian Movement and the Left in the western world for good – given that many more of these cases emerge into the public spotlight.

I have no doubt that the scale of this is considerable. When I served with UNIFIL in Lebanon twelve years ago, a friend I had gained among the locals — a Sunni Muslim — told me the story of how he had lost his virginity. Together with one of his buddies, he tricked a girl from a different village to drink a soda spiked with drugs. When the drugs took effect, the two of them had their way with her in the back of a van. While I was appalled by this story, he himself was quite proud over how clever and cunning he had been. He considered the whole story amusing.

If they behave like this against their own, then there will hardly be any mercy shown to outsiders. At the time I heard this story, I also heard stories for the first time of how playboys of the Saudi royal family used their diplomatic immunity to bring Western women – party girls, models and callgirls – into Saudi Arabia on their private jets. Once arrived, they became what they where intended to be — slaves — and disappeared from the world. I believe Soldier of Fortune magazine has written articles on this subject.

The scale of this enslavement of Western women in the Muslim world is probably much, much larger than just a few isolated cases — and if so, a very potent weapon for exposing the moral void of both Islam and Marxism at once.

I was quite surprised when Aftenposten printed this story, because the journalist responsible for Middle East coverage — Lars Akerhaug — is a hardline revolutionary Marxist. He is not only a member of the the Norwegian Communist Party, he has been their international secretary. He has also been a board member of The Commitee for a Free Iraq, which was founded after the US invasion. His editor is the former party chairman of the same party, and many of their collegues have similar backgrounds. When Aftenposten lets a story like this pass through the filter of silence and censorship, it is probably an indication of a growing problem.

First, the article from Ynet.com:

Palestinian gets 14 years for raping UNICEF volunteer

Norwegian tourist, 60, falls victim to brutal rape by 20-year old man, two of his friends in east Jerusalem

by Aviad Glickman

A 20-year-old Palestinian was sentenced to 14 years in prison on Monday after being convicted of rape, sodomy, indecent attack and robbery against a 60-year-old Norwegian woman who arrived in Israel to volunteer at the Jerusalem office of the United Nations Children’s Fund. According to the sentence delivered by the Jerusalem District Court, Ismail al-Shuamera and three of his friends visited the east Jerusalem neighborhood of Beit Hanina in December 2008 without an entry permit, and began following the Norwegian woman.

After learning that she lived on her own, they decided to rob her. Three of the friends broke into her apartment through the window, tied her hands and legs, raped her and committed sexual offenses on her, one after the other. Then they stole her money and jewelry, as the fourth friend waited outside.

In October 2009, the court sentenced two of the defendants to 12 and 15 years in prison, after the defense failed to take part in the trial’s testimony stage.

Attorney Zohar Giat of the State Prosecutor’s Office asked the judges to sentence al-Shuamera, who was described as the group’s leader, to a long prison term. According to the State, a probation officer had ruled that the defendant had no empathy towards the victim and did not assume responsibility for his actions.

Judges Jacob Zaban, Hana Ben-Ami and Rafi Carmel deemed the offenses committed by the defendants as extremely severe, saying that “the circumstances of the incident and the fact that this was carried out by a group give the incident a cruel and brutal apocalyptic nature.”

The three judges addressed the fact that the group committed sexual offenses and raped the tourist, while their friends were busy drinking, eating and laughing in a nearby room. “What we saw here was obtuseness, cruelty and lack of human sensitivity,” they wrote in the verdict.

All three judges ruled that al-Shuamera was the dominant and cruelest defendant in the case, “insensitive and yet manipulative.”

Mahmoud Qaanaba, another defendant who did not take part in the rape, was sentenced to eight years in prison.

And the translated article from Aftenposten.no:

Palestinian teenagers raped 60-year old Norwegian aidworker

“Unbelievable cruelty and lack of human sensitivity”

The Norwegian woman (60) had arrived in East Jerusalem to work with Palestinian children pro bono for the UN aid organisation UNICEF. But instead sometime during Christmas 2008 she was exposed to a very brutal home robbery, in which she was tied up and raped. A 20-year old Palestinian has now been convicted of the group rape, which happened in the woman’s home in Beit Hanina, and sentenced to 14 years in prison. The boys had found out that the woman lived alone and decided to rob her. When they entered the apartment , they found the woman at home. All four of them have now been given strict sentences by the district court in Jerusalem. Two of the offenders were convicted last fall, while the last round in court was held recently.

Tied up

She was tied up and raped by three of the four men. The last one kept watch outside, according to Ynet. At the same time friends of the rapists are reported to have been eating and drinking in the room next door. Thereafter the offenders left the place with money and valuables. The verdict describes the act as a case of “indescribable cruelty and lack of human sensitivity” . The 20-year old Palestinian is pointed out as the mastermind of the rape. “He was insensitive and manipulative”, according to the judge.

Received norwegian help

“We became aware of the case and followed up in the normal manner through consular assistance on behalf of the woman,” says assistant manager Ragnhild Imerslund of the Norwegian Foreign Ministry.

“She has also asked for assistance through her employer,” says Imerslund.

Random victim

UNICEF Norway informs us that the woman was dispatched to the Jerusalem office of UNICEF for six months from Flyktningehjelpen [Norwegian quasi-NGO].

The woman who was raped was a random victim, states communication advisor Nina Schøyen in an e-mail to Aftenposten.no.

Our German translator JLH just sent us a translation, along with the following note:

Coincidental to your post “Peace through Rape” I happened a few days ago to follow a lead from Politically Incorrect to this article about Alice Schwarzer, who is one of the premier feminists in Germany, a well-known leade of the New German Feminist Movement, and the founder in 1972 of the magazine EMMA.

I think of this as “Memo to NOW: not all feminists are left-wing drones.”

And the translated article from Der Westen:

Alice Schwarzer’s Discomfort With Islam

September 3, 2010 by Wilhelm Klümper

Essen. The politically correct dancing around with the dangers of Islam seems to get on Alice Schwarzer’s nerves. On September 23rd, she is bringing out an angry and rousing book with the title “The Great Cover-Up (Veiling) — For Integration, against Islamism” (Kiepenhauer & Witsch, 272 pages, €9.95) with essays by her and other EMMA authors.

For over thirty years, she says, out of false tolerance people in the West have turned a blind eye to the atrocities in the name of Islam. After the fall of the shah, she herself had spoken with representatives of the Khomeini regime in Iran. With a cold smile, they had said that sharia would be introduced with stoning for homosexuality or a wife’s adultery. “No, the Islamists made no secret of their attentions. No more than the National Socialists,” she says.

Islamic agitators, often trained in Iran, Afghanistan or Egypt and financed in Saudi Arabia have been very good, she says, at disguising their true motives. Today, it is considerably more difficult to distinguish between Islam as a religion and political Islam.

Islamization as an Objective

In Germany, the Islamists found willing listeners above all in the universities, among Protestants, and in the alternative milieu. Here the fear and guilty conscience about doing something wrong with respect toloving the foreigner was great. “And great too, was the readiness of believers of the Old Left to follow new gods after the death of their deities Mao and Che Guevara: Allahu Akbar! Presumably, the young converts of the so-called Sauerland Group had been participating in the Red Army Faction, one, two generations earlier.”

Even greater than the danger of terrorism is the systematic infiltration of our educational and legal systems by the goals of Islamization. The fact that the third generation of Turkish-Germans speaks worse German than the second is also attributable to infiltration by Islamists: “In the marginalized ghettoes, their seed of contempt for democracy and exaltation of theocracy rises.”

This process is advanced by falsely understood tolerance. Thus naive German judges have incredibly agreed to parental applications for exemption from sports training, school excursions, as well as sex education, and thereby contributed to discrimination against Muslim girls. Even the CDU-led NRW (North Rhein-Westphalia) integration ministry distributed handouts in which the Islamic laws are presented as religious duty. And in them, parents who deny their daughters swimming instruction are called “loving.” To this day, honor killings committed in Turkish and Arabic circles are blurred as family drama.

Against this kind of falsely understood tolerance, Alice Schwarzer is betting on an uncompromising anti-Islamization direction. The hijab — “the flag of Islamists” for Schwarzer — must be forbidden in German schools. “Only this logical and rigorous act would give little girls from orthodox-to-fundamentalist families the chance to move freely and equally, at least inside the school.” Naturally the “cloth prison burka” needs to be forbidden in Germany as in France.

The Mantra of Lacking Tolerance

Schwarzer also does not think much of the interior ministry’s organized conference, at which the Islamic societies — from the Turkish government Ditib to Milli Görüs, which has long been under surveillance by the intelligence services — dominated the debate on integration. The groups, in which barely 20% of the Muslims who live here are organized, reproach the German majority with a lack of tolerance and an ignorance of religious laws.

It is not surprising that Schwarzer and her fellow warriors are sympathetic to the Swiss minaret ban. Behind that is the discomfort of many citizens in Europe with theocracies, with their stonings and suicide bombings as well as the (forced) covering of women right here in Europe and forced marriages of daughters and sons who have grown up here. There is also discomfort at the proven frequent use of force in traditional Muslim families and the moral equivalency applied to emancipation, the rule of law, even democracy. “In short, the worry about the human rights fought for so laboriously and bloodily in the last 200 years in the West.”

To all the timid ones who voice their criticism of Islam quietly for fear of the reproach of racism, Schwarzer cries: “The majority of the population is speaking to you from its heart, with an open and rational criticism of this development.”

There is a large selection of news stories tonight from the UK, and about half of them concern the growing epidemic of “yobs” in British public spaces. Yob (or yobbo) is a colloquial term for someone who engages in anti-social behavior, often accompanied by violence, and usually under the influence of alcohol. There is a public perception that the situation is out of control, and that the police are unwilling or unable to do anything about it.

In other news, Saudi Arabia has announced that it plans to require everyone who runs a website or blog to obtain a license from the government. The stated reason for the move is to reduce online libel and defamation.

To see the headlines and the articles, open the full news post.

Thanks to Barry Rubin, C. Cantoni, Caroline Glick, DF, ED, El Inglés, Gaia, GB, goethechosemercy, ICLA, JD, JP, KGS, Kitman, Nilk, Vlad Tepes, and all the other tipsters who sent these in.

Commenters are advised to leave their comments at this post (rather than with the news articles) so that they are more easily accessible.

Caveat: Articles in the news feed are posted “as is”. Gates of Vienna cannot vouch for the authenticity or accuracy of the contents of any individual item posted here. We check each entry to make sure it is relatively interesting, not patently offensive, and at least superficially plausible. The link to the original is included with each item’s title. Further research and verification are left to the reader.

Last night our Flemish correspondent VH translated a summary of a discussion among four Dutch legal scholars about the need to acquit Geert Wilders of the hate speech charges against him. Tonight, as a follow-up, he has translated a much lengthier report on the same meeting from DePers:

This prosecution does not befit a civilized country

Wilders case: “There must be a response to Wilders. Just not with criminal law.”

by Kustaw Bessems

What Geert Wilders evokes may be rancid, ugly, ridiculous, offensive or immoral. Yet he must be acquitted, as four lawyers emphatically argue.

Here in the last century, was the Restaurant Royal. Here Queen Wilhelmina ordered her rice with Thymus vulgaris for lunch. And for a while the Cabinet came to eat here. According to the plaque on the facade of the building, Constantijn Huygens — poet, composer, and secretary of the Princes of Orange, lived here for a few years in the early seventeenth century. After him the regents and foreign noblemen came and went.

The focal point of politics is still nearby, at the Binnenhof [Parliament buildings] and het Plein [office of the PM]. But here, at the Lange Voorhout no. 44, The Hague, scholars have the last word: the Leiden University’s the Hague Campus is located here. And in the dark wood-paneled stile-room, four professors gather for a conversation about the trial of one of the most important politicians of the moment. About a charge of [presumed — translator] insulting Muslims, incitement to discrimination, and inciting hatred. A conversation about the Wilders case.

“I am here because I think it is disastrous that this prosecution is taking place,” Theo de Roos says, Professor of Criminal Law and Criminal Procedure at the University of Tilburg.

“I was a consultant to the Public Ministry (Openbaar Ministerie, OM), but now I emerge on the side of the defense. I want to explain that,” says Henny Sackers, administrative sanction law professor at Radboud University in Nijmegen.

“We are not an extension of Geert Wilders, assures De Roos.

“Oh no, not at all!”, Sackers joins in.

Seated at the table with them are Tom Zwart and Afshin Ellian. Zwart is Professor of Human Rights at Utrecht University. Ellian is a lawyer and professor of social cohesion, citizenship and multiculturalism at Leiden University.

The four men know each other, from the university circuit. They meet each other. “But only recently have we got together for the first time. This combination is established especially for the Wilders case.”

Why? Because they all four are deeply convinced that Geert Wilders should never have been prosecuted for his remarks on the Islam, Muslims and immigrants.

They nod.

And because all four of them find — now that it has come so far — that the court must acquit Wilders.

More nodding follows. And sounds of approval.

Witnesses

All would have been witnesses in Wilders’ trial if his lawyer, Bram Moszkowicz, had his way. But the court rejected the request to hear them. The judges themselves are learned enough, as they find that they and written opinions and articles of others will suffice.

A bit touchy about the judges, are the gentlemen at this table. They hope that they, by stepping forward now, will still be able to have influence on the development of the case.

Ellian: “We may each think differently about the content of Wilders’ statements. But we view this as law scholars. And then the truth: you do not need to agree with what Wilders says, to find that he may say it.”

Zwart: “This prosecution does not befit a civilized country. We address China and Cuba in their dealings with dissidents. They now say in return: ‘You are persecuting a dissident yourselves.’“

Different characters, these gentlemen. Ellian and De Roos talk the most. And the loudest. With many hand gestures. Sackers speaks softly but firmly. He already longs for the little cigar that he, after the conversation, will light once he is outside. Zwart, an active VVD member, initiated the meeting. He takes part, but in the all the while also watches and listens a lot to the others.

De Roos and Sackers were previously consulted by the Public Prosecutor. Who then decided not to prosecute Wilders. Some expressions of Wilders might be punishable, the prosecution thought, but did not see a case in it, because they are part of the political debate. That corresponded with their advice. Only later the Amsterdam Court decided that the Public Prosecutor still had to initiate a case.

“I was opposed,” Sackers says, “My consideration was: if there is a risk that he will be acquitted, then better not prosecute.”

Roos: “You provide this man a splendid forum. Either he is acquitted, then it is: yahoo! Or he will be convicted, then it is of course grist for his mill. And it is already that.”

Sackers: “That is not for a political argument or something, no, that the principle of opportuneness ever came into the law.”

Roos: “The public prosecutor may waive prosecution on grounds of public interest, that is how it is written.”

Context

But how could the court then decide to reach such a different conclusion?

Roos, conspiratorially: “Tom Schalken acted as counselor, also as professor. I have read somewhere that this case is actually the continuation of a feud that we as professors have been having about these kinds of articles of law. And there is something in this.”

Then: “What I have a big problem with, is that in the ruling of the Court the one-liners of Wilders are not being judged in their context. Once you do so, you can see he has a consistent story about protecting Dutch culture against Islam. You may find that bad or ridiculous, but that is a contribution to public debate.”

Tom Zwart leans forward: “What are you actually saying now with these proceedings to all those people who voted for the PVV? In fact you say that they also should be behind bars.”

He sinks back in his chair: “You should exercise the most extreme caution with crimes of expression.”

The others agree with that.

Yet that is not what Dutch prosecutors have as an assignment. Since late 2007 they have has to abide by the “Instruction Discrimination” of Justice Minister Ernst Hirsch Ballin (CDA, Christian Democrat), who with this was responding to demands in Parliament. In it, it says: “In discrimination cases is assumed in advance that opportuneness is present.” In other words, in principle, discrimination cases are always prosecuted.

De Roos: “Here there is tension. Because it is of course very politically correct, isn’t it, such an instruction? But this puts the OM in terrible trouble. If you take a good look at it, you will see they are mostly busy with people who have said insulting things to a police officer or something.”

Ellian: “Fag! Homo! That kind of work.” And to De Roos: “You know, Theo, I always thought that those treaties and laws against discrimination were mainly to be able to act when discos routinely refuse Moroccan youth or something. And that must be, because that is so humiliating. That’s what you need to take out the entire Rataplan for.”

De Roos: “That’s right, it’s not meant for crimes of expression.”

Ellian: “Opinion-crimes I call them. The law should also be better formulated. It has become a source of conflict rather than a means to ensure that conflicts are resolved. The law gives people false hope. Because there are hundreds of charges being filed that almost all lead to nowhere.”

De Roos: “It was very good of Mark Rutte of the VVD to made a start with improving the law, by broadening freedom of expression. Too bad it got bogged down [in Parliament — translator] in stuff about Holocaust denial. My position is: we would rather have too much legislation than too little. And you really notice this not only in cases that have to do with the Islam. Take the case against the writer Peter Waterdrinker. In his novel an unnamed character calls the mayor of Zandvoort a joodje [little Jew]. That went all the way to the Supreme Court! While it is terrible to even prosecute that at all.”

Sackers: “That case has also been very important for evaluating expressions in their context. Wilders might still benefit from that. The Supreme Court decided that the entire novel had to be part of the dossier.”

He continues: “I find it very peculiar that the insulting of a group on grounds of religion can be punishable. Over time, one has stuck all kinds of things onto that law.”

Theo de Roos: “And as you must keep in mind: from the standpoint of public order. But who now finds those statements of Wilders so bad that riots break out?”

Ellian: “Muslims don’t. That irritates me a lot, that image of Muslims as a gang that at the littlest or the slightest, smashes things to pieces.”

“The main thing is,” Zwart brings in, “that you have to apply your national laws within the limits of Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights, the right to freedom of expression.”

European Court

It is dusk outside. And the atmosphere is jovial. But quite a lot of consensus sounds in this room. There is, therefore, someone not present: Rick Lawson, a professor. Professor of Human Rights, Leiden. He also advised the OM. But he was — and is — in favor of the trial. Like Zwart, he relies on the European Convention, but he stresses the freedom of religion and the prohibition of discrimination. Does Lawson not have a point at all then?

Zwart: “Where he has a point, is that it may not be an impossible to prosecute Wilders. But that is something different from actually doing so. That is not at all in the spirit of all European rulings in this field.”

Well, almost all. For a long time the European Court offered the maximum possible scope for political debate, more than, for example, artistic expression. But in a recent verdict against the Belgian Daniel Ferret of the Front National, the Court upheld a conviction for inciting to hatred and discrimination, precisely because the Court expects additional restraint from politicians. They should “avoid statements that could encourage intolerance”.

“Yes, I admit that is surprising,” says Zwart. “It is a verdict that within the Court had the smallest possible majority, it has not appeared in English like all major verdicts, but I think it is a trial balloon. In indeed seems something is changing in Strasbourg. For Wilders’ case in the Netherlands that does not matter, because that verdict was dated after the time he made his statements. It should therefore play no role. But if I were Wilders’ lawyer, I’d think twice before I went to Strasbourg. I would not be surprised if they are awaiting his case to be able to turn around fully and further limit the playing field for politicians.”

Lesson in emancipation

It needn’t have gone this far. De Roos: “What few people realize moreover, is the fact that this case can be very quickly wrapped up. Everyone says it will go to the Supreme Court or even the European Court. But just imagine that the judges now in the first instance will acquit Wilders. The OM will not appeal because it didn’t want the whole prosecution in the first place. And Wilders can’t. Then it is just finished.”

And also for the good, he finds: “An end must be put as soon as possible to the illusion that criminal proceedings can protect Muslims against such statements. If you look what Catholics had to deal with in the past, that is many times worse. “

An acquittal as a lesson in emancipation for the Muslims?

“Yes,” Sackers, Zwart and De Roos say. “Yes.”

Ellian: “Some views of Wilders such as the head-rag-tax or shooting at the knees of hooligans [a remark he made in response to riots and destruction in a football stadium which were also directed against stewards and police — translator], are morally not acceptable.”

De Roos: Rancid! That’s the word I always find the most appropriate for his ideas, rancid.”

Zwart: “I prefer to say: I do not agree.”

Ellian: “He is also not a Cicero eh? It is sometimes ugly what he says.”

De Roos, from memory: “Quo usque tandem abuteris, Catilina, patientia nostra? [How long, Catiline, will you abuse our patience?] That is what Cicero said right in the face of Catiline, beautiful!”

Ellian: “In this country, no party gets a majority, also not that of Wilders. That makes it even less appropriate to try to stop someone with criminal law.”

De Roos: “There must be a response to Wilders. Just not with criminal law. People should just tell him: you cannot do that, damn it! It’s a shame!”

A side note from VH:

The latest poll shows the PVV remains firm in the polls (31 seats; they have 24 now in the 150 seats Parliament) and would be the second biggest party (the biggest party in the polls, is the VVD with 32 seats). The Christian Democrats (CDA) however, keep sliding down (14 seats now in the polls, 21 in parliament). Still, the coalition government of those three parties has a majority in the polls of 77 (76 in parliament).

Most people are familiar with the tragic case of Rachel Corrie, an American “peace activist” who was backed over by an Israeli bulldozer and killed when she was in the Gaza Strip acting as a human shield against the destruction of Palestinian houses.

As several photos of Ms. Corrie reveal, she not only sported the keffiyeh — a length of cloth with a distinctive pattern representing “Palestine”, and worn as a neckerchief or other trendy accessory by leftists — she also veiled herself in the hijab, Muslim-style.

This always made me wonder about the back-story of Ms. Corrie’s involvement with Palestinian “peace” activism. When you see a woman wearing hijab in a Muslim context, it’s not only signal that she is an observant Muslima, obeying the strictures of Islamic law concerning the modesty of women. It also indicates that she is the property of a man — her husband, brother, father, son, or other male relative. An uncovered woman is a “whore”, fair game for the first man who happens upon her. A covered woman is protected from such assaults, but only because access to her is guarded and controlled by a man recognized under sharia as her legal keeper.

Chances are that when Rachel Corrie arrived in the territories, whether she slapped on a hijab or not, she was fairly quickly acquired by a local strongman in the area she chose for her “protest”. She would have been considered an especially choice target, being young, not unattractive, and blonde — all characteristics that rich Arabs are willing to pay good money for.

All of the above must remain mere speculation, since Rachel Corrie will never be able to reach a wiser maturity and write her memoirs about what really happened to her. However, from the following article in Arutz Sheva, we catch a glimpse of what befalls young naïve “peace activists” of a similar stripe when they arrive in the territories:

Arabs Harass Female ‘Peace’ Activists; Left Silences Victims

Two activists have exposed a disturbing phenomenon that they say is an open secret within the “peace camp”: female “peace” activists are routinely harassed and raped by the Arabs of Judea and Samaria with whom they have come to identify. They say the phenomenon has gotten worse lately and that many foreign women end up as wives of local Arabs against their will, but cannot escape their new homes.

Roni Aloni Sedovnik, a feminist activist, penned an article in News1 – an independent website run by respected investigative reporter Yoav Yitzchak – under the heading “The Left’s Betrayal of Female Peace Activists Who were Sexually Assaulted.”

“A nauseous atrocity has been going on for a long time behind the scenes at the leftists’ demonstration at Bil’in, Naalin and Sheikh Jarrah [Shimon HaTzaddik],” she writes. “A dark secret that threatens to smash the basic ideological values upon which the demand to end the occupation of the Territories rests.”

Now, why has this remained a “dark secret”? There are numerous witnesses to what goes on in “Palestine”, and not just Muslims or other young women in a similar bind. In the photos taken immediately after the accident that killed Rachel Corrie, you can see young Western men crouching over Ms. Corrie’s prostrate form. There are plenty of Western useful idiot males in the Palestinian environment who could blow the whistle on the “dark secret”, if they had a mind to.

But they don’t, and this is the result:

It turns out, she explains, that when female peace activists from Israel and abroad come out to Judea and Samaria and demonstrate against the Israeli “occupation,” they are assaulted sexually by the Arab men whom they have come to help. These are not isolated incidents, Aloni-Sedovnik stresses. Rather, this is an “ongoing and widespread” phenomenon that includes verbal and physical abuse. She accuses the ‘peace’ camp of purposely covering up the trend so as not to offend “the Palestinians and their heritage, which sees women as sexual objects.”

That is, the primacy of political ideology and the maintenance of solidarity are more important than whether the young women in their midst are systematically exploited as sex objects.

That’s the Left for you.

Media cover-up

Aloni-Sedovnik cites two specific cases which she has knowledge of – one is a case of rape and another is “severe sexual harassment.” The attackers in both cases, she stresses, were familiar with the victims and knew that they were “peace activists.”

The rape occurred several months ago in the village of Umm Salmona, near Bethlehem. The victim, an American activist, wanted to press charges but leftist activists put pressure on her not to do so, so as not to damage the struggle against the ‘occupation.’

The second case involved an Israeli activist who took part in the demonstrations at Shimon HaTzaddik neighborhood in eastern Jerusalem, where the High Court ruled that Jewish families may move into homes that they have owned for generations. This woman filed a complaint with the police but retracted it after “severe and unfair pressure” from the demonstrations’ organizers, according to Aloni-Sedovnik. Furthermore, the organizers appealed to demonstrators to dress modestly when they come to the Arab neighborhoods and suggested that they wear head scarves.

Unfortunately, wearing headscarves by itself is not enough: every veiled woman must also have an owner. If a woman is lucky, she will find a protector who is interested in her only for her political value, and become attached to him. But obviously this is not always the case.

Aloni-Sedovnik accuses the Israeli media of complicity in the cover-up.

“How is it that we do not hear the voice of the radical feminists who repeat, day and night, that occupation is occupation, and it does not matter if it is a nation that is doing the subjugation, or a man who is subjugating a woman?

How indeed? Whence this Silence of the Feminists?

“It appears that there is a gap between the radical-leftist feminist theory about the active resistance to the occupation of the Territories, and the stuttering self-annulment in the face of the violent conquest of women.”

The gap is unbridgeable: Marxist ideology — including its modern offshoot, Multiculturalism — trumps the rights of women. We saw a version of the same phenomenon in the 1970s, when even the most gung-ho feminists ignored the way American black revolutionaries treated their women. Smashing the state was more important than the rights of women back then, and it still is today — especially when the state is the Zionist Entity.

[…]

Earlier this year, a blogger and literature buff named Yehudah Bello, who writes in various venues about history and the theory of evolution, wrote a blog post with the striking title: “The Female Leftist Activists are Raped Day after Day, Night after Night.” Bello is no ultra-nationalist, and he supports the creation of a PA state – a fact which makes his claims all the more believable.

Most female leftist European activists, writes Bello, are brainwashed in their youth into hating Israel, and then sent directly into Judea and Samaria, without spending a single night in Tel Aviv, lest they see civilian Israeli society for themselves and find that they like it. They are whisked off to Shechem, Jenin and other PA towns and housed in Arab educational or cultural facilities, or private homes. Local Arab girls are sent to befriend them and they have no choice but to trust them.

It is easy, explains Bello, “to carry out a sexual crime against a foreign girl, in her first days away from her family, in a place where no police have ever visited. And this is what happens, and has happened.”

[…]

“These are not just cases of rape carried out to satisfy lust,” he writes. “Usually, they are carried out systematically in order to make the girl pregnant and then take her as a wife – after she converts to Islam, of course. We know about this system from the stories of women who underwent a similar process within Israel and escaped to Europe. But it is hard to escape from the Palestinian territories. Sometimes these women – some of whom are no longer young – are never allowed to leave their homes unaccompanied, in order to forestall their escape.”

If someone were to compare the list of foreign female activists who enter Judea and Samaria to the list of those who leave, Bello claims, the magnitude of the phenomenon would be proven. “Everyone knows about it, but no one dares talk about it…”

“Everyone knows about it, but no one dares talk about it…”

This is the heart of the matter. As in everything else concerning Islam’s impact on the West, the problem is not Islam itself, but the radical Left.

These young women could not be led like lambs to the slaughter without the cynical connivance of the international Socialist establishment, which is more than willing to break a few blue-eyed blonde eggs, provided they get to make their anti-Zionist omelet.

Hat tip: latté island.

*** UPDATE ***

From Dymphna, an update to this post, based on Phyllis Chesler’s recent essay. She verifies and underlines the ugly truth here:

What is happening on the West Bank reminds me of the American 1960s, when idealistic young white and Jewish women, who thought they were volunteering for Martin Luther King’s non-violent movement for black civil rights, found themselves up against many angry, sociopathic, criminal, and sexually violent members of the Black Panther Party. I was one. I have my war stories.

Today, privileged, young, white, Jewish, and Arab women who travel to the West Bank to “protect” Palestinians from Israeli soldiers, also seem to be facing similar troubles. According to one recent and very disturbing report [note: this is the same report cited in our post, above], foreign (American and European) and Israeli Jewish and Arab left-feminists are being routinely harassed, raped, and even forced into marriage by the very Palestinians whom they have come to “rescue….

Ms. Chesler has her own experience in this mess. As a young woman:

I myself was once pressured by leading left feminists not to reveal that I had been sexually harassed and then assaulted by my United Nations employer.” It would not look good for (white) feminists to accuse a black man of what may only have been a cultural misunderstanding…” I nevertheless continued to demand justice-and was not supported by some of the very same feminists who years later would support Anita Hill against Clarence Thomas.

In other words, this repression of the reality of race-based and “cultural” brutality has been going on for fifty years.

So much for feminism. We need to walk it back to the very early feminists ideals and start over. Modern-day lefty feminists are deeply embedded in and part of the problem. They stopped being part of the solution during the very early days of the ‘60s “Revolution” when they failed to speak out about their own experience of abuse in order to ‘belong’.

In reality, it was just more of the same Bolsheviks cynicism two generations previous to the Civil Rights “revolution”. Only this one was more cynical than ever because the sixties couldn’t claim ignorance. They simply buried the truth of history.

And so it continues. Different actors, different stage, same criminally foul play.

It appears that no matter where you step on the left, you sink up to your neck in the muck of rotting, corrupt ideas that ought to have been given a decent burial long ago.