Before getting down to the detailed articles about the Mediterranean refugee crisis, here’s a general statement of principle from the President of the European Commission, who considers it essential that anyone should be able to move anywhere within the Schengen Area:

During a speech in The Hague yesterday, European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said that freedom of movement in the EU is a vital part of the European project.

“The right to free mobility is embodiment of the European project — one of the most tangible results of the EU’s efforts and central to both our economy and identity. Free mobility is to Europe what a foundation is for a building. Remove it and the entire structure is undermined. This is why the Commission will not compromise on this principle,” said Barroso, who is prepared to take Denmark to court if the border agreement proves to run contrary to the EU Treaty and Schengen agreement.

This is despite the fact that no country in Europe wants to allow the refugees that are accumulating in Italy to cross over into any neighboring countries. The French in particular are adamant that ils ne passeront pas.

There is a massive amount of hypocrisy in all this Schengen posturing. The French and the Germans will make sure that as few enrichers as possible trickle into their countries.

Despite the best efforts of the French authorities, the following article from The Independent reveals that the “Camp of the Saints” crisis has actually reached Calais, where desperate culture-enrichers hole up between attempts to cross the Channel to the Land of Milk and Social Benefits, a.k.a. Britain:

Unsafe in Libya, Unwanted in Europe: Exiles of the Arab Spring

Hundreds of desperate migrant workers have gathered near Calais

In a derelict industrial complex to the east of Calais they shiver under their sodden blankets dreaming of a Europe that simply doesn’t exist. Seney Alema and his friends are the northernmost vanguard of a human wave that has swept across the continent as Nato’s bombs continue to pummel Libya.

While Europe has applauded the steady toppling of North Africa’s dictators, the continent has been unwelcoming to the thousands of people who have fled the region — the separate states bickering over who should take the responsibility for the refugees’ fates.

When the war against Muammar Gaddafi broke out earlier this year, people like Seney were trapped. European powers scrambled ships to evacuate their own nationals but sub-Saharan migrants, who did the kind of jobs Libyans simply didn’t want to do, were left to fend for themselves.

As law and order broke down the beatings and robberies began. Some were press-ganged into fighting the rebels, others simply disappeared. So thousands are now fleeing across the Mediterranean in barely sea-worthy boats, hoping that somewhere like Britain will give them shelter.

“I didn’t really like my life in Libya but at least it was some kind of life,” explains Seney, a 17-year-old Eritrean with a pencil moustache who had lived in Tripoli for four years. “When the war broke out I fled inhumanity in Libya but I find inhumanity in Europe.”

Despite calls from France and Italy for the EU to “share the burden” of dealing with the migrant tidal wave that has been unleashed by the instability gripping north Africa — specifically Tunisia and Libya — Britain has refused to take in a single “Arab Spring” refugee.

Some East Africans caught up in the tumult are inevitably trying to head to Britain, where there are already sizeable communities of compatriots waiting for them. In the past few days small groups of such exhausted refugees have been arriving in Calais, after making a dangerous journey by boat from north Africa to the European mainland — usually Italy — and then up through the continent.

Their current home is a rubbish-strewn squat on the outskirts of town with broken concrete walls and no running water — euphemistically nicknamed Africa House. Night after night they try to smuggle themselves onto lorries heading towards Britain in a game of cat and mouse that often has fatal consequences.

[…]

Last week brought reports that a ship carrying 600 people, mostly Somalians, had sunk off the coast of Libya. The UN estimates that 10 per cent of those making the crossing were drowned.

Now here’s where it gets interesting: check out the officially reported year-to-date numbers of trans-Mediterranean migrants for 2011:

The official figures show that 10,300 people from Libya and 24,000 from Tunisia have landed on Lampedusa so far this year.

In other words: the official total for the Lampedusa crossings (evidently excluding Linosa, Pantelleria, Sicily, Malta, and the Italian mainland) is now 34,300.

Gates of Vienna’s reporting has thus been officially vindicated. As recently as ten days ago, various European media outlets were citing an overall total — for landings at all locations — of 25,000, even though the Italian government figure had been listed as 27,000 since early April. Less than a week ago the official Italian estimate was revised upward to 30,000, which still seemed too low to me. I had been tracking the new landings, and put the figure at close to 35,000.

So you read it here first.

However, the landings since last week would seem to have nudged it above 35,000, and that seems to be borne out by the following article:

African Migrants Fleeing Libya Describe Boat Ordeal

One in ten migrants fleeing the unrest in Libya dies. They often make the journey in old and overloaded boats.

So far, UNHCR says over 12,300 migrants have arrived in Italy and Malta from Libya over the past two months.

The previous article listed 10,000 immigrants from Libya (although it did not include the other Italian ports or Malta in its total). Thus the additional 2,300 Libyan culture-enrichers would send the overall total up to 36,300.

So I think it’s safe to say that 35,000-37,000 refugees have crossed the Med since the Arab Spring began in January.

The same article gives these sobering statistics:

A little over a week ago, 1,400 people drowned at sea trying to escape the unrest in Libya.

But the dangers are not enough to deter others making this perilous journey.

Here’s another story about the dangers of the crossing, this time coming from the Greek islands. The migrants in this case are from South Asia, and probably traveled overland through Asia Minor before embarking from the coast of Turkey:

Tragedy With Immigrants Off Preveza — One Child Dead, One Missing

A man and an eight year old boy were recovered dead from the sea are of Nicopolis bay in Preveza, West Greece. Another boy, allegedly the twin brother of the dead has been missing. The Coast Guard had rushed to the area after being informed about an overturned boat. Twenty two people were rescued so far. The boat was carrying illegal immigrants and was sailing towards Italy.

The immigrants were rescued and transferred to the old town hall of a nearby city.

The owner of the boat and captain of the horror trip was a 52-year-old Preveza resident, who was arrested by the police.

The incident happened in the early morning hours of Wednesday.

According to some Greek media, the immigrants had paid 5,000 euro per person in order to reach Italy. The immigrants were from Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Finally, we have an eerie echo of one of the recurring themes of Jean Raspail’s novel The Camp of the Saints — in order to prove to themselves that they are not “racists”, Europeans feel compelled to rescue all the unfortunate souls who endanger themselves trying to reach Europe:

Top Bishop Praises Lampedusa Residents

From alleged racists to rescuers, Bagnasco says

(ANSA) — Lampedusa, May 18 — Italy’s top bishop visited Lampedusa Wednesday and praised the Sicilian island’s inhabitants for how they had coped with an unprecedented influx of migrants from North Africa.

“Let Italy and Europe not forget Lampedusa,” Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco said after touching down on this stepping stone between Africa and Europe.

“In the first stage of the (migrant) assault,” he said, “the community risked being depicted as racist but then it showed generosity, reaching a peak in the latest shipwreck, a few days ago, which could have been a tragedy but was not because people didn’t hesitate to dive into the sea to rescue (migrants)”.

Lampedusa was flooded with about 25,000 migrants from Tunisia in the first months of the year, followed recently by thousands of boat people suspected to have been sent deliberately by the Gaddafi regime in war-torn Libya in unseaworthy vessels which have risked foundering.

Three people drowned in the latest shipwreck but over 500 were saved.

The rules require that Europeans protect, house, feed, and clothe everyone that attempts to get to their shores, no matter how expensive and destructive their presence in such numbers becomes.

As I have often said, this is evidence of mass insanity.

Hat tips: AC, C. Cantoni, and Insubria.

Hundreds of culture-enrichers violently attacked police today in the Rosengård neighborhood of Malmö in southern Sweden. Nicolai Sennels sends this brief summary based on Swedish-language media:

Civil war in Sweden
by Nicolai Sennels

Report from Europe. Malmö in South Sweden will be the first major European city with Muslim majority. A civil war-like situation is developing very fast. Malmö’s firefighters are carrying stone-proof face masks and military grade bullet-proof vests. Recently more than a hundred immigrants violently attacked the police — short video clip (35 sec.). A machine gun was used during another attack on the police — short video clip (2 min.). A bullet hole through the side mirror of a police car shows that it was a miracle that no one got hurt.

The situation is escalating and becoming more and more permanent. Small European Gaza Strips, characterized by overpopulation, poverty, a low level of education and the prevalence of Islamic extremism, hate, and violence against the non-Muslim surroundings, are erupting all over the continent. Police are overworked and more and more often need to flee the Muslim ghettos because of violent attacks. Peace, the economy, and democracy are under pressure, as ethnic tensions in Europe rise fast. History is unfolding before our eyes.

A subtitled video of events in Rosengård is below the jump. Many thanks to Steen for the translation, and to Vlad Tepes for the subtitling:

Transcript (slightly different translation):

00:00		Everything began when police apprehended a man suspected of narcotics crimes.
00:05		He resisted, and more and more people gathered round the police.
00:10		Everything degenerated into an uproar, with a hundred people involved, and fireworks were thrown at the police.
00:17		Several patrols were dispatched to the place, and by midnight the situation had calmed down.
00:23		In related incidents, four smaller fires were lit in the area.
00:28		But apart from the apprehended drug dealer, no one else has been held by the police.

For a complete listing of previous enrichment news, see The Cultural Enrichment Archives.

For those of you who have been wondering: Yes, Vlad Tepes is having problems with his site. Depending on where you are in the world, you may get an Apache server message instead of Vlad Tepes when you click the above link.

Vlad’s traffic has increased to the point where his provider persuaded him to upgrade to a VPN (for both blog and video service), a much more expensive option. This involved moving to a new server, which meant a new IP address. As a result, all the changes had to propagate to all the different DNS (Domain Name Servers).

Vlad’s site came back up after a while, but then they had to “flush the DNS” (I think that was the term; I have no idea what it means). Since then Vlad has been unavailable in much of the world.

Here’s how Vlad explained the upgrade process:

When my sites — Vlad (the blog) and bankoran.com (the video site) — started to get popular, the traffic generated ‘processes’. When there are more than 25 processes, it gets shut down, as it’s too large a drain on the resources of a shared account, and therefore is unfair to all the other people who have web pages, email, etc. on the same physical server.

With the VPN [virtual private network] they recommended, I get unlimited processes and bandwidth. Which means I can accommodate as many users as care to view my site. Also, when someone leaves a comment on a popular thread and the page auto-emails everyone else in the thread, it won’t shut down vladtepesblog.com.

Presumably it means I can post more videos to bankoran with easier embedding to other sites, and so on.

Vlad told me earler this evening, “I was on the phone all day with tech support before I came to work. I was so ticked off at their brutal major incompetence.”

In other words, his fans must be patient for a while longer. This is not a malicious outage; it is technical trouble.

You know you’re being effective when CAIR comes after you.

The anti-sharia volunteers of Middle Tennessee are definitely being effective. According to Lou Ann Zelenik, the Executive Director of the Tennessee Freedom Coalition, Muslim lobbying groups such as CAIR have been pushing back in the wake of her organization’s event featuring Geert Wilders. “We definitely stirred things up,” she told me in a phone conversation last night. “CAIR demanded an apology from the Williamson County Republican Party for hosting Geert’s press conference. Can you believe that? An apology!

“Well, they can demand all they like, but they’re not gonna get one.”

Another sign of TFC’s effectiveness is the fact that the website for Olive Tree Education has been taken down. Olive Tree is an “educational” front that serves as a non-profit proselytizing service for the Islamic Center of Nashville. It was featured in TFC’s video exposé that aired last Thursday at the Geert Wilders event.

TFC’s investigation drew attention to the web of interconnections among Olive Tree, the Islamic Center of Nashville, radical imams at local mosques, Vanderbilt University, and various other educational institutions and ecumenical community groups.

The heat proved too much for Olive Tree Education, and they dropped their site, presumably to buy time so that they could scrub all the references and links to Anwar al-Awlaki and other hard-core mujahideen. As of this writing, however, a cached version of the site is still available, so interested readers should be able to find all those incriminating references that were cited in the video. Olive Tree’s blog is also still extant, although I’m not sure whether the same material may be found on it.

Here’s the official press release in which CAIR demanded that the GOP “repudiate” TFC and Geert Wilders:

CAIR Asks GOP to Repudiate Tenn. Event Honoring Islam-Hater

Notorious Islamophobe Geert Wilders to be honored at Republican luncheon

WASHINGTON, May 12, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) today called on state and national GOP leaders to repudiate a Tennessee event at which party officials will honor one of the world’s leading Islam-haters, extremist Dutch politician Geert Wilders.

A luncheon in Wilders’ honor will reportedly be held today [May 12th, the date of Mr. Wilders’ public appearances] at Williamson County Republican Party headquarters in Franklin, Tenn. Wilders is in Tennessee at the invitation of a group headed by former congressional candidate Lou Ann Zelenik, who once claimed that the construction of a new mosque would pose a threat to that state’s “moral and political foundation.”

The more I get to know these Tennessee volunteers, the more I appreciate them. I’m looking forward to their future initiatives — they know how to be effective when it comes to resisting Islamization.

Whenever we Americans think about Australians, we picture a bunch of tough, straight-talking people who take no nonsense from anyone, and never give in to bullying. So it comes as a bit of a surprise to learn that despite the growth of Islam and Multiculturalism, no group has mounted a significant anti-sharia demonstration in Australia.

Until last Sunday, that is. On that day anti-jihad activists, led by the newly-formed Australian Defence League, gathered in Federation Square in Melbourne to protest the Islamization of Australia.

Below are excerpts from two reports on the May 15 demo in Melbourne. The first is from Nilk, who was present for the occasion (and who also took all the photos):

Standing Against Sharia or, Free Speech in ‘Melbun’.

Yesterday was the first demo of the Australian Defence League. We were standing against sharia in Australia, at Federation Square in Melbourne, because it’s about time that someone did and we’re also rather partial to free speech.

Over the course of the past few months, I’ve had people ask me why on earth I’d bother being involved with any sort of rally. “It’s not time.” “It’s racist.” “You’ll look just like those EDL thugs.”

And, of course, “You won’t accomplish anything.”

Needless to say, there are also people who think that the mere idea of speaking out against the islamification of your country is “racist”, but we already knew that and were expecting some opposition.

What began as a bit of a facebook group advertising as a “Rally Against Racism And Fascism” (using the acronym RAAF, which I find rather offensive to our Air Force, by the way) ended up as a fullblown socialist extravaganza with those twin pillars of democratic Western Civilisation the Socialist Alliance and their fellow travellers the Socialist Alternative shouting into megaphones at us such rhetoric as, “Muslims are welcome, racists are not!” and “F*** off, nazi scumbags! F*** off, nazi scum!”

Well, yesterday we had people from other groups standing with us. They were not there as representatives of those groups; just as Australians who are concerned about the imposition of sharia requirements on our country and culture.

We were a small group, too. I’ve heard of estimates of about 100 people, but I would hesitate to go that high. I’d say 60 max, but I need to check more photos. A quick glance here will give you a comparison, and according to the HeraldSun, 40 was more like it.

I won’t argue with that (much), because it was quite fluid with some people arriving later than others, and some leaving early. When it started getting physical, then some did leave.

This is understandable when you consider that the people who came were not professional or serial protesters like the opposition.

We are just ordinary people who are tired of having to pander to a particular minority…

We don’t want halal meat.

We don’t want special times at public swimming pools to cater to muslims who don’t want to share with the kuffar, or window coverings to protect those precious petals from our evil gaze.

We don’t want to have to hear about eid at christmas time, or all about how islam is wonderful. Tell that to the Royal Women’s Hospital with its FGM unit. While FGM is not exclusively an islamic practice, the majority of women and girls who have suffered it are muslim.

We just want our Australia back.

[…]

The enemies of freedom can tell the world that they won, and that’s fine.

It doesn’t mean that they did.

It just means that they beat up on a bunch of ordinary Australians who were exercising their legislated freedom to say, “We don’t want sharia in Australia”.

Read the rest at Right Wing Death Bogan.

Aeneas also posted a report at the International Civil Liberties Alliance:

Beginnings Of The Australian Counterjihad: Australian Defence League (ADL) Holds Demonstration In Melbourne on 15 May 2011

Earlier today members of the Australian Counterjihad demonstrated against Islamisation in the city of Melbourne in the State of Victoria. Australia lags behind Europe and North America with regard to the intensity of Islamisation but its political elite seem determined to follow their lead and make the same disastrous mistakes that have strengthen the hand of Islamic fundamentalists.

The demonstration was compact but included key activists from across Australia and marked the public launch of the Australian Counterjihad. A broad range of Australians were present at the ADL demo from many age groups which illustrates the range of the population that is concerned about the Islamisation of Australia. This is how movements in Europe and North America were established and which now have tens of thousands of activists. Key regional organisers will go back to their local areas and grow their Divisions locally. The demonstration in Melbourne has been a good focus and a key catalyst for the strategic organisation of activists across Australasia. Networks are developing and the key nodes are now in place. This is just the beginning and we expect impressive progress with the Australian Counterjihad in the months and years ahead.

Patriotic Australians protest against sharia under the gaze of King Tut

Of course, as in Europe and North America, the media and politicians were quick off the mark to demonise the fledgling ADL rolling out the usual label designed to delegitimize without having to win an argument. Here is an article about the ADL demo from the Herald Sun that seems to focus on the reporting political pronouncements such as ‘bigotry would not be tolerated’ which erroneously implies that the ADL has an agenda of bigotry which could not be further from the truth. The powers that be are afraid that a mass movement will emerge that will bring their deliberate encouragement of Third World cheap labour immigration and its associated Islamisation to a halt. That would not sit very well with the globalised elite which national governments, such as that in Canberra, serve or face the consequences.

Again, like in Europe and North America, the usual left wing mob turned up to counter protest. This is often comprised of the misguided, the ill informed, and those who cannot tolerate anyone who is not a Marxist. These groups are quite happy to undermine freedom of speech, allowing only speech that is approved by their own narrow ideological stance. They cannot abide those with differing viewpoints and seem to have a deep seated hatred focused against Western Civilisation. The standard leftist tactic is to try to intimidate their opposition which they tried in Melbourne. Of course members of the Counterjihad held their ground and made their point despite their intimidation.

Counterprotestors complete with nose rings and Mohican haircut

One of the speakers at the counterdemonstration seemed to take an extreme anti Western stance while wearing a symbol of Palestinian terrorists — the kaffiya. He seemed to think he was on the barricade in Russia in 1917. He also appeared to care more about refugees than Australians and the stability of Australia. Perhaps he believes that the sole purpose of Australia is to accommodate people from failed states to embrace the cultural norms that caused those states to fail. Of course we have a tradition of welcoming refugees in the West but in the past such refugees were willing to come on our terms and adapt to our culture. Today they come as colonists who demand that the West adapts to their preferences and it is that is at the heart of the problem of recent immigration. Those of a Marxist disposition are the ones who want the social problems that are caused by such colonisation because it undermines the ‘system’ that they so despise.

[…]

The demo in Melbourne was small but successful, key strategic objectives were met, and the basis of the Australian network was put in place. The Australian Defence League has started the ball rolling in Australia and it will grow both in terms of membership and success just like its counterparts which started small in Europe and North America.

Read the rest at ICLA.

Australia has emphatically decided that it wants nothing to do with sharia law. Attorney-General Robert McClelland said, “There is no place for sharia law in Australian society.” He wants newcomers to embrace Australian values and culture.

In other news, the Syrian government says that the reports of the discovery of mass graves in Deraa are false. Videos have surfaced on the internet that purport to show mass graves in the city, but the authorities deny their existence.

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

Thanks to Anne-Kit, C. Cantoni, CSP, DS, Insubria, JD, KGS, McR, Steen, Van Grungy, 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.

2011 Spring Quarterly Fundraiser, Day 3

Here we are at Day Three of our Spring fundraiser and I’m feeling… confused. I’ve written a few — too few — acknowledgements to our first-day donors. This is unusual since the first day usually finds me full of energy for this task, one which will continue until all our donors have received a response.

So why the slow-down so early? Well, for one thing, I’ve been peeking ahead to look at the messages people put on their donations. Not everyone does, but each person who includes a note gives me a clue about himself. Even the first one for this time around, from a faithful Dane, sounded just as I imagine him: “Cheers!” is all he said, but I could picture a glass of snaps to go with it. The Baron says he really is like that in person.

Many of you add encouraging notes about our work (which is really the Baron’s work these days, plus the amazing contributions of our guest posters). My work is mostly confined to cooking and keeping up with email when I’m able to sit here. The cooking is an absolute necessity; if I didn’t fix meals the Baron would live on peanut butter, cheese and chocolate. He’ll fix omelets on occasion, but mostly he wants and needs “jump-in-your-mouth” food that he doesn’t have to think about. Keeping the blog going and freelance editing takes up very long hours for him. Exercise? Mowing the lawn and digging holes at my request. You know how gardeners are always moving things…

So today I fixed supper for us and answered some correspondence and responded to a few donations. But mostly I was reading the notes of the donors from yesterday and today, and thinking about how I came to be here “knowing” so many people who share our concerns about the way the world is going.

One of our most frequent givers usually has witty messages accompanying his gift. I laughed out loud the time I read “For Cheese Doodles”. That note was especially funny because we can’t eat them, but also for my own personal history reasons: when I was a child I once ate myself sick cramming Cheese Doodle after Cheese Doodle into a small body not used to junk food. On that occasion my mother had taken me to New York City to visit for a week with her aunt and uncle. The latter was the Irish Consul General to NYC, and they’d invited mother and me to come up. I remember the popovers that didn’t pop and my great aunt’s dismay; being perpetually hungry, they seemed fine to me. I also remember crying bitterly over the helium balloon that got away from me in Central Park. But mostly I remember being left to my own devices at a party given in my mother’s honor. So many grown-ups talking at one time! And talking so loudly to be heard over one another and over the small orchestra playing in the next room.

I remember standing next to the table covered in damask linen. Maids in black dresses weaved through the crowd with trays of drinks, but none for me. So I listened to the music while looking over the things on the table. The large bowl full of bright yellow-orange blobs attracted my eye. Bravely, I put one in my mouth and it was love at first bite. The texture, the crunchy sound when I bit down, the color and taste! I was in heaven as I worked my way methodically through that bowl. No one noticed. What adult with a martini ever looks over at a bowl of Cheese Doodles? What adult ever looks down at the small hand reaching for them?

I no longer remember how I ever got under the table to deposit those Doodles as they made their way back up, but that’s where I was when my frantic mother found me, my hands and arms colored bright orange up to my elbows, not to mention the orange overcast to my very green face. She told me later that even my freckles had a green hue.

Somehow I was washed and put to bed. I fell asleep listening to the orchestra being drowned out by a sea of murmuring voices. And I woke up still loving Cheese Doodles, though it would be a long time before I tasted another one.

Today, our witty donor noted that his gift was to be used for “cheerleader uniforms”. Again, I burst into laughter; he’d managed to push my personal history button again… I can picture these nubile young women — though probably not as vividly as the Baron can. They’d have skimpy crimson skirts and white shirts that read “Crusaders” across the back and a picture of the Gates on the front. Then I remembered that “Crusaders” was the name of all our sports teams in high school (need I say it was a Catholic school? I’ll bet they’re not crusaders anymore). But cheerleaders for Gates of Vienna is indeed an excellent idea, one that bears contemplation even in cyberspace… who knows what might come up?

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Today a reader asked about the origins of our blog:

Hello, Baron:

Glad to hear you enjoyed your trip and I’m glad Mr. Wilders’ got a taste of good old Southern hospitality, which he must have enjoyed, too.

Lately, I’ve been trying to find out more about how conservative blogs came into being, as in Gates of Vienna’s case: how you made the decision to start the blog, how you decided to design it, etc. I’ve searched the archives but haven’t located anything. I can’t even get to the first post, where, presumably, you announce GoV’s inception.

Have you ever been interviewed about your experiences with GoV? It would be interesting.

This is one of my favorite blogs because it deals with hot button issues, while at the same time, you all come across as extremely nice people. This in contrast to the shark tank ambience of some other blogs…

Oh the shark has pretty teeth dear,
And he shows them pearly white

Always loved that play. Cyber sharks have made me a better swimmer on the occasions I do venture into these waters.

And she’s right; we’re more like goldfish…

…as to our origins, they go back to 2004. I think this may be our first post. Before that, I’d been writing a blog on my own, one I’d deleted before we decided to start Gates of Vienna. The name for our blog was his idea — his A-Level study of European history stood him in good stead there. He chose his nic from a Jack Vance novel; this was an inside joke for Vance readers since BB is never actually on stage in those stories. People simply refer to him. The Baron also suggested my name. He knew I liked the idea of Saint Dymphna and how her life story fit in with my former work with abused families. Not to mention her protection for lunatics, of which I am decidedly one. I loved the idea of using her name, though having the “Saint” appellation had already been taken.

It was also the Baron’s idea that keeping up a blog might help me with my grief over my daughter’s death. I’d found The Belmont Club and was delighted to read someone who thought like I did, but who wrote so lucidly. Wretchard remains the model. Funny thing was, I somehow knew that the name of his blog referred obliquely to the town of that name in Massachusetts. I lived just a short distance from there for years and was often in Belmont visiting relatives. Wretchard, on the other hand, was living a scholarship student’s life; slim pickings in a boarding house while he attended Harvard.

My comments at Belmont Club were beginning to be too long. And it was hard to stay on topic when Wretchard’s analyses created such new lines of thought. At any rate we were taking up more bandwidth than courtesy really allowed, and the Baron was right in thinking that a blog of our own, something we did together even though he was gone for much of the week for his job, would help ease my grief. It certainly was graphotherapy, as Buddy Larsen, a fellow commenter at Belmont put it. He has a new identity now, but he’s that same old Scandinavian wit he always was. And he’s still active at Wretchard’s place, which has long since moved to Pajamas Media.

The Baron’s met a lot of people we’d only read when we started this blog. I asked him if there was anyone he’d be excited to meet now. He told me he’d gotten over his “famous people” idea, and that the thrill of meeting Fjordman still remains a high point for him.

We’d both still like to meet Wretchard. The thing is, you can tell by his writing style that’s he’s an introvert just like the Baron. So every time I picture such an encounter, it’s the two guys just standing there while I babble into all the empty places…

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Here’s all the places everyone came from today to give to Gates of Vienna.

Stateside:

California, Florida, Illinois, Iowa, Montana, Nevada, New Jersey, Oregon, Pennsylvania, and Texas

Near Abroad:

Canada

Far Abroad:

Australia, Denmark, Israel, the Netherlands, and the UK

What a generous group y’all are!

The tip jar in the text above is just for decoration. To donate, click the tin cup on our sidebar, or the donate button. If you prefer a monthly subscription, click the “subscribe” button.

The Center for Security Policy has just released a massive study of the encroachment of sharia in American jurisprudence.

Controversies over several prominent applications of sharia in the USA have recently been featured in the news, but most Americans would expect that the total number of such cases is relatively small — just a few here and there.

However, this turns out not to be true: the stories that make the news are just the tip of the iceberg. Thanks to the dedicated work of David Yerushalmi and his associates, we now have a detailed listing of fifty such cases, and there are almost certainly many more.

According to Shariah in American Courts:

The Center for Security Policy’s report, Shariah Law and American State Courts: An Assessment of State Appellate Court Cases [pdf] evaluates 50 Appellate Court cases from 23 states that involve conflicts between Shariah (Islamic law) and American state law.

These cases are the stories of Muslim American families, mostly Muslim women and children, who were asking American courts to preserve their rights to equal protection and due process. These families came to America for freedom from the discriminatory and cruel laws of Shariah. When our courts then apply Shariah law in the lives of these families, and deny them equal protection, they are betraying the principles on which America was founded.

The study’s findings suggest that Shariah law has entered into state court decisions, in conflict with the Constitution and state public policy. Some commentators have said there are no more than one or two cases of Shariah law in U.S. state court cases; yet we found 50 significant cases just from the small sample of appellate published cases.

Others have asserted with certainty that state court judges will always reject any foreign law, including Shariah law, when it conflicts with the Constitution or state public policy; yet we found 15 Trial Court cases, and 12 Appellate Court cases, where Shariah was found to be applicable in these particular cases. The facts are the facts: some judges are making decisions deferring to Shariah law even when those decisions conflict with Constitutional protections.

Shariah Law and American State Courts: An Assessment of State Appellate Court Cases includes summaries of several cases in which the court’s application of Shariah law appears to be in direct conflict with Constitutional liberties and the public policies of the state.

A pdf version of the 630-page report may be downloaded here.

Below are excerpts from the introduction to the report:

With the publication of this study and subsequent studies now in preparation, our objective is to encourage an informed, serious and civil public debate and policymakers’ engagement with the issue of Shariah law in the United States of America. This public debate is more urgent than ever before, as organizations such as the Muslim Brotherhood and their salafist coalition partners state openly their intent to impose the Shariah State and Shariah law as dominant across all Muslim majority countries. Institutionalized, authoritative Shariah doctrine is comprehensive and by definition without limit in its ambitions and scope. It includes legally mandated, recommended, permitted, discouraged and prohibited practices that are explicitly biased against women, homosexuals, non-Muslims, former Muslims and those designated as blasphemers.

United States universities and colleges are increasingly offering courses and specializations In Shariah law, including business schools, law schools and general courses. The academic study of all kinds of comparative law including Shariah is worthwhile; but in many cases, these courses may not provide full information on the conflicts between Shariah and Western legal traditions and values.

In addition, there are organizations and individuals within the United States actively and openly advocating for the establishment of Shariah law in America, especially for personal status and family law. A prominent one is the Assembly of Muslim Jurists of America1 (AMJA) with more than 100 members including local Imams and Shariah authorities across America, as well as Shariah authorities from other countries. AMJA promotes the adherence to Shariah law when possible in all legal and civic activities by Muslim Americans, and in some cases, by non-Muslims.

Given these stated goals of AMJA and similar organizations, this study was conducted to discover the extent to which Shariah law had in fact entered U.S. state courts. News reports have identified individual cases of plaintiffs, defendants or judges citing Shariah or Islamic law. Many groups and individuals have raised concerns about state courts citing foreign and transnationalist laws and precedents, including Shariah law. The American Public Policy Alliance, a non-partisan organization that advocates for the Constitutionality of U.S. and state laws and public policies, has drafted the American Laws for American Courts Act (ALAC) to prevent enforcement of foreign legal decisions that violate Constitutional protections and liberties. That ALAC Act, which has passed in Tennessee, Louisiana and Arizona and to date has not been legally challenged on any grounds, was used as a methodological tool to define which Shariah- related cases in state courts were in conflict with the Constitution or state public policies.

This study is based on research and analysis conducted in 2010 and 2011 by the Center for Security Policy and the offices of the Center’s general counsel, attorney David Yerushalmi. Initial identification of potential cases was done by counsel, CSP staff and interns, and citizen volunteers from the non-profit organization ACT for America. Information regarding state cases reported upon here was retrieved through Google Scholar using search terms including “Islam,” “Islamic” “Muslim,” “Sharia” and “Shariah.” Additional search terms were countryspecific: “Iran,” “Pakistan,” “Egypt” and “Saudi Arabia,” all countries with Shariah-centric legal systems.

The sample we reviewed was only “the tip of the iceberg,” because Google Scholar is not a complete database of state cases involving Shariah. As a search tool it only allows retrieval of those reported appellate and trial court level cases that are available through open sources (See “Future Directions,” below). We found an initial sample of approximately 150 cases involving Shariah doctrine, which were narrowed to a set of 50 cases designated Relevant or Highly Relevant.

As you can see from the above description, there are at least a hundred more cases than were covered in detail by the CSP report.

Sharia is not just a threat — it is already here. It’s on its way to becoming the law of the land.

The following video, which was produced by Americans for Peace and Tolerance and the Tennessee Freedom Coalition, concerns the encroachment of radical Islam in Tennessee. It debuted last week in Nashville, and was featured during Thursday night’s event along with Geert Wilders and the other speakers.

The film reveals the infiltration of local institutions by Muslim Brotherhood front groups, “exposing radical Islamist preachers in Nashville, TN who were accepted by the city leadership and the media as ‘moderates,’ indoctrinating Vanderbilt University students and Nashville mosque members with extremist anti-American views.”

According to reports from the rebels in Libya, Col. Muammar Ghadafi has fled the capital and is holed up in the desert south of Tripoli. They say he pulled out several days ago, and that the rumors of his death are false.

In other news, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says the raid that killed Osama bin Laden was just a stunt pulled by President Barack Hussein Obama to ensure his re-election next year.

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

Thanks to AC, Barry Rubin, C. Cantoni, Caroline Glick, Insubria, JD, KGS, 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.

2011 Spring Quarterly Fundraiser, Day 2

As Dymphna explained last night, the general theme for this quarter’s fundraiser is supporting and standing by one another. Not just financial support — although that’s the obvious reason for this latest bleg — but solidarity and loyalty in the face of conflicts, both external and internal.

We’re singling out Vlad Tepes out for special support because he has become a virtual partner of this blog, and the financial demands on his site have just increased substantially. Dymphna will explain it in more detail in a later post, but Vlad’s success has taken a toll: his traffic has increased to the point that his hosting service has forced him to use a much more expensive service option.

I’ve been working daily with Vlad for about three years, and his efforts have added enormous value to Gates of Vienna. He and I divide up the labor according to our respective skills — he’s the video man, and I’m the text and image man. He captures, edits, uploads, and subtitles videos. I coordinate translations, convert text files, make logos, act as copy editor, and write introductions and other necessary texts when required. It’s a great symbiosis, and I don’t know what we’d do without him. That’s why we’ve chosen to tithe your generosity to help Vlad — he’s such an integral part of the team.

Vlad has endured other sorts of travail, as long-time readers will remember. After his Rosetta Stone videos of Col. Allen West were wiped out — one of them had gone viral — he was unjustly attacked by a number of people in a most devastating manner. Those of us who know him well and appreciate his character and dedication stood by him then, because we all know that he would do the same for us.

As if the Jihad weren’t enemy enough! It never fails to amaze me how vicious people are during these intramural battles. I realize that such conflicts are inevitable — Dymphna has explained it in depth in previous posts — but the viciousness and vitriol still take me by surprise every time.

We prefer not to discuss such squabbles publicly except in the most general of terms, because blog wars consume time and energy to no good purpose, wasting resources that could be better employed to serve the larger mission.

So I’d just like to thank the readers, colleagues, and friends who have stood by us during the various bouts of nastiness that began with the LGF Wars back in 2007 and have recurred sporadically ever since.

You all know who you are. You help keep us afloat.

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The first day of fundraising pulled in donors from the usual eclectic mix of locales:

Stateside:

California, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, and Texas

Far Abroad:

Australia, Croatia, Denmark, the Netherlands, and the UK

Many thanks to everyone who has chosen to give your resources to support our work. You’re an inspiration for us to keep plugging away.

The tip jar in the text above is just for decoration. To donate, click the tin cup on our sidebar, or the donate button. If you prefer a monthly subscription, click the “subscribe” button.

Notwithstanding the traffic ticket*, my three days in Tennessee left me with a decisively favorable view of the Volunteer State. I saw a lot of majestic scenery during the long ride across the state, but my close-up view began after I arrived at Wednesday evening’s event in the suburbs of Nashville. That’s when I had the chance to meet and mingle with some of the dedicated anti-jihad activists who are resisting the Islamization of their state.

Two of the Tennessee Freedom Coalition people I met that night will serve as examples of the caliber of Tennessee’s volunteers.

Andy Miller is the Chairman of TFC, and was our host for the evening. He’s a native of Middle Tennessee and an alumnus of Vanderbilt’s Owen School of Business Management. After graduation he moved to Manhattan for a career on Wall Street. He returned to Tennessee in 2000, buying a farm in Williamson County where he lives with his family. His profession remains in the area of finance, focusing on venture capital for local companies. He is also active in Republican Party politics, recently chairing “Tennessee Victory”, the GOP’s Get Out The Vote effort. His work helped the GOP to fully regain control of both houses of Tennessee’s Legislature and the Governor’s Office. Andy continues to be active in the Williamson County Republican party, including its Chairman’s Circle.

Lou Ann Zelenik is the Executive Director of TFC. Following graduation from Vanderbilt’s School of Engineering, Ms. Zelenik founded her own construction company, specializing in road work and utilities. This practical experience as a small business owner fueled her activity in local conservative and Republican Party politics; early on she helped organize local Tea Party groups. Such endeavors earned recognition for Ms. Zelenik: 2010’s Conservative of the Year (the National Fiscal Conservative PAC), and in 2011 a Lifetime Achievement Award (Rutherford County’s Republican Party). She ran for Tennessee’s Congressional District Six in 2010.

There were a number of other Tennessee volunteers in the crowd that night, including sixteen state legislators. Along with all the other activists from Tennessee and farther afield, they were there to greet Geert Wilders and Sam Solomon, who were to be featured speakers at Thursday night’s event.

Bill Warner was the third guest speaker for both events, but he is a local Tennessee boy, already well-known to most of the attendees. I have admired his work at Political Islam for several years, and it was a pleasure to meet him at last and talk shop with him and his wife.

In the dinner line I met Rebecca Bynum, the editor of The New English Review, as well as Rabbi Jon Hausman of Boston, who has been active for years in the fight against sharia and Islamization.

A number of people came in from Canada, New York, and the West Coast to meet Geert Wilders, and I had the opportunity to discuss their efforts on behalf of our shared cause. Pictured at the right with Geert is Georgette Gelbard, who came all the way from Los Angeles to take part in this historic occasion

During and after dinner the three keynoters and a number of other speakers gave brief talks about the mission of the Tennessee Freedom Coalition and its resistance to the growing Islamization of the state.

The evening was warm and pleasant, the food was delicious, and the company unmatched. It was a night to remember.

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The following afternoon many of the same people made a road trip to Franklin, a town just south of Nashville. The occasion was a meet-and-greet for Mr. Wilders at the local Republican Party Headquarters, culminating in a press conference for TV reporters, newspaper writers, and internet journalists.

A small group of demonstrators gathered across the street from us, holding up signs and placards for the passing cars. There were about ten or twelve of them, and they were an orderly bunch — no anarchists or culture-enrichers, just ordinary middle-class Tennesseans with a liberal-progressive mentality.

I wandered across the street to talk to them for a few minutes. I always like to hear opposing points of view, and I’ve found that if I stay civil and let other people explain themselves, I can learn a lot about the basis for their opinions.

Two of the women were willing to talk and argue with me at length. They explained that they were opposed to Mr. Wilders’ brand of hate, as they perceived it. They felt that he was tarring all Muslims with the “terrorist” brush, even though only a tiny minority of them were extremists. They also said that he was condemning all of Muslim culture based on the behavior of a few violent people.

When I spoke to them about sharia, they responded by asserting that “those people” (pointing across the street) desired to reverse the separation of church and state, so they were just as bad. Not only that, Christians had done things that were at least as horrible as anything Muslims have done.

The last fellow I chatted with was of a slightly different political stripe. His main concern was the real cause for the destruction of the towers of the World Trade Center, which he believes were brought down not by the jetliners, but by controlled explosives. He kindly gave me a booklet he had written, which refers to a much longer book has made available online as a free download. If I have time over the next few weeks, I’ll go through his writings more carefully and post about them.

After speaking to him, I handed out my Gates of Vienna business cards to a few people and then made my way back across the street.

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The main event occurred that night (Thursday the 12th) at the Cornerstone Church, a mega-church north of Nashville. I got there early, and while I was waiting, I had coffee — the church has its own coffee shop, and serves espresso! — with Janet Levy, an activist and writer from California whom I had met briefly at an earlier event in the Washington area. We had a lengthy discussion about different aspects of the struggle against the Great Jihad, and shared ideas for future operations.

The main hall can seat about 6,000 people. When I spoke to Ms. Zelenik afterwards, she told me that about 4,500 people had been there, but when I looked around it seemed that the vast majority of seats were filled, so that may be an underestimate.

They all came to hear Bill Warner, Sam Solomon, and Geert Wilders talk about the true nature of Islam and the dangers posed by Islamization and the gradual imposition of sharia law. You’ve seen the text of Mr. Wilders’ speech, and with luck we will eventually be able to post videos of the event — which was recorded in its entirety by TFC — so that you can see how superb the other two keynote speakers were.

The audience was also treated to talks by several local people, including radio host Steve Gill, Andy Miller, and Lou Ann Zelenik. Ms. Zelenik is a real firebrand of a speaker, and her rousing talk ahead of Mr. Wilders’ speech set the tone for what came after. She told me later that she has had ten death threats, and I can understand why: this courageous woman tells the truth without mincing words, and it’s no wonder that the Muslims and their allies on the Left want her taken out of the game.

There was only one brief heckle during Geert Wilders’ speech — a man yelled from the back something about Jesus telling us to love our enemies. I saw no demonstrators, although one of the cops told me there had been a dozen or so out by the edge of the road, and by his description they may have been the same ones I talked to in Franklin. He also said there had been a few Muslims out there, but there was no trouble.

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Last week’s events in Nashville can provide inspiration for the rest of the United States, Canada, Europe, Australia, and anywhere else in world where grassroots groups are resisting Islamization. Tennessee can also serve as a model for future actions all across the American heartland.

This was the largest and most effective event of its type that I have ever attended, and one of the main reasons for its success was the mega-church environment. I realize that this doesn’t sit well with some of our atheist or secular readers, but it’s hard to argue with effectiveness.

The plans to bring in Mr. Wilders gained TFC some media attention a day or two ahead of the event, but most of the advance publicity was by word-of-mouth through churches, civic organizations, and the local Republican party. The venue was ideal for a large crowd, since it could seat as many people as a convention hall, and had enough parking to accommodate all their vehicles. The church already had the expertise and personnel to direct traffic, deal with crowd control, and provide security. With the local police co-operating, the setup was orderly and secure.

There was no entry fee — near the end of the evening, ushers passed around donation baskets, just as they would at a church service. But no one was obliged to pay.

The most moving features of the event were the religious and patriotic displays. We sang the national anthem, said the Pledge of Allegiance, and heard public prayers. This sort of civic culture was the norm when I was young, but has almost disappeared from much of the country in the decades since. It was a delight to discover that is alive and well in Middle Tennessee — for an old-fashioned geezer like me, it was a draught of cool water after a long, long drought.

The audience response to the speeches was uniformly positive and enthusiastic — Geert Wilders was interrupted by applause over and over again. One could tell that people had been desperate to hear these things actually spoken out loud. These were opinions which they had thought were forbidden, but which they now understood to be held in common with thousands of other Tennesseans. Mr. Wilders reminded them of their rights under the First Amendment — as he said, “here I can say what I want to say without having to fear that I will be dragged to court upon leaving this church.”

Thousands of people who had never heard of Geert Wilders have now listened to him and understood his message. A plainclothes cop told me he had known nothing of Mr. Wilders until he was assigned to the day’s detail. “Then I got online and googled him, and wow! There it all was.”

The more local cops who become aware of all these ideas, the better we will all be.

This is why Tennessee is the model. This strategy can be replicated all across Middle America. Nashville prides itself as being the “buckle on the Bible Belt”, but it’s a huge belt, and there are a lot of mega-churches across a wide swath of the country.

Lou Ann Zelenik told me several days later that she has received calls from pastors in other cities who want to do the same thing that TFC did in Nashville. So the model is already spreading virally, just as any good model should.

There are other excellent speakers, more volunteer organizations, and numerous venues out there waiting to be filled by the Tennessee model. This is how all the politically correct media roadblocks can be bypassed.

The truth will out, and the Tennessee Freedom Coalition is helping to make it happen.

*

For those of you who commented or wrote to ask me about the (expensive) ticket: Tennessee has a law requiring drivers on the interstate to move over a lane when they pass a stationary emergency vehicle on the shoulder. It makes sense —fast-moving vehicles sometimes run into cops and ambulance personnel while they’re standing on the edge of the highway. I was aware of the law — there are numerous warning signs along the interstate — but I wasn’t used to it yet. Forty-odd years of conditioning have made me change lanes carefully and methodically on high-speed roads: check the side mirror, the rearview mirror, the side mirror again, and then look over my shoulder before I start to move. I managed to do it successfully on several other occasions, but the time I got caught I just didn’t get started soon enough. Oh, well — them’s the breaks. Besides, it was a small price to pay for the privilege of seeing the Tennessee Model in action.

“I’m Dutch. I am not a European.”

While he was in Ottawa last week, Geert Wilders was interviewed by James Cohen for the Free Thinking Film Society and IFPS-Canada. Many thanks to Vlad Tepes for uploading this video:

After secret German intelligence was used by the United States to target terrorists in Afghanistan, the German government cut back on the secret information it had previously been passing to the CIA. At least one of the dead terrorists was a German citizen, and under German law the government agencies involved as well as the CIA may be criminally liable for his death.

Many thanks to JLH for translating an article on the topic from yesterday’s Der Spiegel:

After drone attacks
Germany Reduces Sharing of Secret Information

The federal government intends to insure that knowledge from the secret services is no longer used to target and kill those suspected of terrorism. According to SPIEGEL’s sources, passing on information to the USA will have conditions attached.

Hamburg. On the evening of October 4, 2010, three young Islamists — residents of Europe — died through an American drone attack on a Taliban camp in the Pakistan-Afghanistan border area, Waziristan. One of them, Bünyamin E. was in possession of a German passport. At the beginning of January, 2011, that surprised Jörg Ziercke, head of the Federal Criminal Office with a criminal charge for suspicion as accessory to murder.

Since Fall, 2010, several German courts have also been examining charges against the US secret agency, the CIA. There were also accusations against the national police, since it was information from Germany which supposedly led the Americans to the Islamists. It has not yet come to a judicial investigation of the death of Bünyamin E.

Instead, there are consequences on the political level: According to SPIEGEL’s information, the federal government has reduced the transmission of secret intelligence to the Americans in the battle against terror. Apparently, soon after the drone attack of October 4th, the ministry of the interior issued a decree to stop passing on information which could lead to locating German citizens.

Clues that flow into the search lists of the Americans are now to be accompanied with the proviso that they may only be used for capturing, not for killing. The secret service adds to its transmissions the restriction that they are only to be used in prevention of danger or simply reportage. This should preclude the CIA or the American military from acquiring German data for air attacks.

Bünyamin E. from Wuppertal, who was 20 at the time of his death, had been known to German authorities for a long time and was under observation. After the Turkish-German had been trained for armed battle in a camp of the Islamic movement in Uzbekistan, the Düsseldorf prosecutor’s office instituted a procedure against him on suspicion of preparing for a serious act of violence. There were reported indications that he may have been planning attacks in Germany, reported Die Zeit at the end of January. Bünyamin E. was considered by German investigators to be a suspected terrorist. Information about such things has been routinely passed on to the USA since 2001.

So it was in the case of E. After his departure from Wuppertal in the summer of 2010, the secret services had sent diverse information about the young man to the United States, among other things his cellphone number, the cellphone number of a contact person in Turkey, as well as the address of a café in Pakistan.

After the attacks, the minister of the interior at the time, Thomas de Maizière (CDU) had examined the constitutional basis for transmitting information to the Americans. Presently the attorney general’s office in Karlsruhe is studying whether it should institute an investigative procedure against those responsible for E.’ s death.

Whether it comes to a judicial procedure on Bünyamin E.’s death is still an open question. The legal situation is clear: If a German citizen dies by violence in a foreign country, the judicial system is obliged to investigate the circumstances.