Gates of Vienna News Feed 2/29/2012

Gates of Vienna News Feed 2/29/2012The Irish government has announced that it will hold a referendum on the new fiscal treaty proposed by the EU. Ireland is dependent on the Eurozone for bailouts, so a “no” vote on the treaty would have serious repercussions.

In other economic news, Portugal is on track to meet the austerity requirements for its next tranche of bailout money. In Greece, however, unions staged walkouts in protest of the new austerity measures. And the Swedish economy shrank in the final quarter of 2011, due to the crisis in the Eurozone.

In other news, the pop singer Erykah Badu caused a controversy in Malaysia when a photo was published in a Malaysian newspaper in which a tattoo reading “Allah” in Arabic was visible on her skin. The photo created an uproar, and despite apologies by the singer and the newspaper, her concert was cancelled.

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Islamic Fundamentalism in the German Federal Republic

German minarets


The 21st-century Counterjihad movement came late to the game. The work that we do today was anticipated more than twenty years ago by Karl Binswanger, a German scholar and expert on the Ottoman Empire. In a ground-breaking essay published in 1990, Dr. Binswanger analyzed the parallel Turkish society that was then emerging in German cities.

Andrew Bostom has commissioned a translation of this important work. The full text is below, preceded by Dr. Bostom’s introduction.



An Introduction to Karl Binswanger
By Andrew G. Bostom

Karl Binswanger was born in 1947, and studied at the University of Munich where he received a Ph.D in 1977 for the thesis, Investigations on the Status of Non-Muslims in the Ottoman Empire of the 16th Century, With a New Definition of the Concept “Dhimma”, a pioneering analysis of dhimmitude under Ottoman rule. He was a research fellow at the Institut fur Geschichte und Kultur des Nahen Ostens, Munich, from 1978-1980, and subsequently analyzed Islamic fundamentalism in Iran, Syria, and within Germany itself.

Binswanger’s seminal 1977 study examined the discriminatory and degrading conditions imposed upon non-Muslim “dhimmis” — predominantly Christians — subjugated under the Ottoman Turkish sharia in the 16th century. His analysis elucidated the key role played by the creation of Muslim “satellite” colonies during the Islamization of these vanquished Christian societies:

Geographic integrity is shattered by implanting Islamic nuclei.; The sectarian reference point of Dhimmi communities is removed, and further sectarian pruning occurs according to Islamic standards. The autonomy of Dhimmis is reduced to an insubstantial thing… They are driven out the moment that Islamic nuclei appear in the area. Dhimmis’ possession of their churches is granted. These are closed or razed the as soon as a mosque is established in their neighborhood…Regulations in the social area…demoralize the individual: [they] are consciously instituted for their degradation. The social environment of the Dhimmis is characterized by fear, uncertainty and degradation.

During 1990, Binswanger published three remarkably prescient essays on the (primarily Turkish) Muslim immigrant community of Germany. Binswanger opens his 1990 essay, “Islamic Fundamentalism in the German Federal Republic: Development, Inventory, Prospects,” with this ominous illustration:

”We reject reform and modernization. We will keep fighting until a godly order is established!” This quotation is not from Cemalettin Kaplan, the “Khomeini of Cologne”, but rather from Kadir Baran, the West German national vice-chairman of the “Idealist Associations” [“Idealistenvereine”], in other words, from a ‘Grey Wolf”. [u]ntil the Autumn of 1987 the federation’s ideology was purely nationalistic, chauvinistically Turkish. This is symptomatic of a development that one can observe among Turks in the Federal Republic of Germany, too, since Khomeini’s victory over the Shah: Islamic fundamentalism is on the march…

He then demonstrates how the strident re-affirmation of Islamic identity within Germany’s Turkish immigrant population engendered, “…an increasingly intense demonization of the culture, legal and social order of the host society: the image of Germans as enemies.” Central to this disturbing process was the inculcation of validating Islamic (i.e., Koranic) motifs which promote hostility to non-Muslims. Arguably the most accomplished (and easily the most unapologetic) scholar of how the Ottoman Turks progressively imposed the sharia on non-Muslims, Binswanger became alarmed by the obvious modern parallels to that phenomenon he observed in the behaviors of their contemporary Turkish descendants in Germany.

Twenty-one years later, the author and veteran television journalist Joachim Wagner published his analysis of the parallel Sharia-based Islamic “legal” system burgeoning in Germany, entitled Richter ohne Gesetz (“Judges without Laws”). Wagner’s alarming investigation — summarized in English during a two-part Der Spiegel series — demonstrates how what he terms “Islamic shadow justice” undermines Germany’s Western constitutional legal system, ultimately abrogating even German criminal law. Joachim Wagner’s contemporary study has lead him to conclude that even the ostensibly limited application of Sharia arbitration within Germany’s Muslim community nullifies the state’s Western conception of legal justice.

The problem starts when the arbitrators force the justice system out of the picture, especially in the case of criminal offenses. At that point they undermine the state… Islamic conflict resolution in particular, as I’ve experienced it, is often achieved through violence and threats. It’s often a dictate of power on the part of the stronger family.

All of Wagner’s findings and conclusions were anticipated two decades earlier in Karl Binswanger’s remarkably prescient essay from 1990, “Islamic Fundamentalism in the German Federal Republic: Development, Inventory, Prospects,” reproduced below.

“Islamischer Fundamentalismus in der Bundesrepublik. Entwicklung-Bestandsaufnahme-Ausblick” [“Islamic Fundamentalism in the German Federal Republic: Development, Inventory, Prospects”], pp. 38-54, published in Im Namen Allahs. Islamische Gruppen und der Fundamentalismus in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, Koln, 1990

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Islamic Fundamentalism in the German Federal Republic
Development — Inventory — Prospects

by Karl Binswanger

“We reject reform and modernization. We will keep fighting until a godly order is established!”

This quotation is not from Cemalettin Kaplan, the “Khomeini of Cologne”, but rather from Kadir Baran, the West German national vice-chairman of the “Idealist Associations” [“Idealistenvereine”], in other words, from a “Grey Wolf”.[1] This is symptomatic of a development that one can observe among Turks in the Federal Republic of Germany too since Khomeini’s victory over the Shah: Islamic fundamentalism is on the march — even among those who were once called “Fascists”.

Yet this phenomenon has not come about by chance. Starting in the 1970’s it was preceded by a trend toward self-organization of the Turkish migrant workers that had little to do with Islamic fundamentalism. After Khomeini’s victory this trend intensified, and the autonomous organizations discovered Islam as their true ideology. What is sociologically remarkable here is the fact that the penchant for self-organization increases with the duration of residence in the Federal Republic.[2]

Ever since the beginning of the workers’ migration into the Federal Republic, Turks have joined local associations here, which at first served to promote social life. At the street level they appeared as coffee houses in which board games (such as Tavla) and cards were played, and in addition most of them had a modest library at their disposal. Only a few of these associations ran a prayer room.

Since the early 1970’s a threefold metamorphosis of these recreational clubs can be observed:

  • a substantial reorientation turning them into associations with a religious emphasis and an increase in mosque construction,
  • their consolidation in umbrella groups, and
  • the politicization of the latter (not least importantly as a repercussion of conditions in Turkey resembling civil war).

Essentially these are the points that make up fundamentalism of the Turks in Germany. This development accelerated and intensified in the 1980’s: an increase in the number of umbrella groups joined by the hitherto exclusively local associations — thus a consolidation process (cf. the Chronology in Table 1), also in the way in which Islam increased in importance as a factor in the discovery and preservation of their identity. Several criteria indicate this:

  • the rapidly increasing number of purely religious member-associations with a simultaneous dwindling of Nationalist member-groups,
  • an ideological pivoting of the segment that split off from the Idealists and now preaches ideas that are more Islamic than Nationalist,
  • the rapid construction at the federal level [staatlich] of the DITIB [acronym for the Turkish-Islamic Union of Institute for Religion], which “bought up” associations that previously had not yet belonged to one of the autonomous umbrella groups,
  • the broadening of the spectrum of the activities of the associations to areas traditionally dealt with by social services for foreigners,
  • radicalization, which can be proved at the organizational level for instance by the founding of the Union [the DITIB in 1984?] by Cemalettin Kaplan (“Khomeini of Cologne”), and the qualitative change from “everyday Islam” to letter-of-the-law fundamentalism,
  • the increasing politicization of the work of these associations, which no longer has anything to do with the slogan “equality of religion and politics” but rather extends to associations presenting their own party tickets for German foreigners’ commissions, and even to public recommendations to cast votes for a party in the homeland, and thus is a clear acknowledgment of its affinity to a specific political party in Turkey,
  • an increasingly intense demonization of the culture, legal and social order of the host society: the image of Germans as enemies.

Table I: Chronology of the founding of the most important associations

1956:   Islamic Center in Geneva, Moslem Brotherhood (MB)
09/15/1973:   Union of Islamic Cultural Centers (IKZ), Cologne
11/03/1973:   Islamic Center in Munich / Islamic Community in Southern Germany (Moslem Brotherhood, MB)
11/22/1976:   AMGT [Union of the National Worldview in Europe] Cologne (under the code name “Turkish Union in Europe”, but already known within the Union as AMGT)
1978:   Islamic Federation / IZ Berlin (MB/AMGT)
06/18/1978:   Idealists (ADÜTDF), Frankfurt
06/29/1978:   Islamic Center in Aachen (MB)
09/21/1978:   Islamic Center in Cologne (MB)
08/23/1980:   Federation of Islamic Associations and Communities in the Federal State of Nordrhein-Westfalen (MB/AMGT)
06/20/1982:   Federation of Islamic Associations in the Federal State of Baden-Württemberg (MB/AMGT)
12/23/1982:   Federation of Islamic Unions [sic, Vereinigungen] and Communities in Hessen (MB/AMGT)
12/05/1982:   Federation of Islamic Centers in Germany (MB), Cologne
12/19/1982:   Renaming of the AMGT camouflage organization “Turkish Union in Europe” as “Islamic Union in Europe”
04/05/1984:   Federation of Islamic Associations and Communities in the Federal State of Bavaria (MB/AMGT)
    Kaplan splits off from the AMGT:
06/09/1984:   Islamic Union in Cologne (Kaplan)
11/25/1984:   Federation of Islamic Associations and Communities, Cologne (Kaplan)
05/20/1985:   Official founding of the AMGT under that name
October 1987:   The “Çelebi faction”, TIKDB, splits off from the “Idealists” (ADÜTDF), with a heavy emphasis on Islamic ideological themes.

Who’s who in this scene?

The most important umbrella groups in alphabetical order by acronym (cf. also the overview on Table II):

ADÜTDF: The federation of the “Idealists” (popularly known as “Gray Wolves”) was founded on June 18, 1978, in Frankfurt. It was the European affiliate of the youth organization (“Idealists”) of the Nationalist Action Party (MHP) of Alparslan Türkeş, or today of its successor party the MÇP. Former MHP party members hold key positions in the ADÜTDF, and they openly swear allegiance to Türkeş now as always as their “supreme leader” (başbuğ).

Until the Autumn of 1987 the federation’s ideology was purely nationalistic, chauvinistically Turkish. As a consequence of the loss of members to the religious associations over the course of the 1980’s and the splitting off of the “Çelebi wing” in 1987 (see TIKDB below), the ADÜTDF now started writing Islamic-fundamentalist slogans on its banner, as the introductory quotation demonstrates.

AMGT: The “National View Organization in Europe” was founded by Necmettin Erbakan’s National Welfare Party (MSP) as an offshoot of the youth organization “Akincilar” (roughly: “Blitzkrieg warriors”). At its foundation (November 22, 1976 in Cologne) the association called itself, according to its records, the “Turkish Union in Europe” and renamed itself on December 19, 1982, “Islamic Union in Europe”. In reports about the union in the daily newspaper Milli Gazete, however, and on its emblem the union bore the name of AMGT from 1977 on, also commonly in the abbreviated form, “Milli Görüş” (“National Worldview”). This is precisely the title of the programmatic book by Erbakan.

Not until May 20, 1985, did the Union register under its real name with the District Court in Cologne. (Since the defenders of the constitution adhered strictly to the letter of the union records, they did not even list the AMGT before that date.)

The important thing is that the Union was founded by a prominent Moslem brother, Yusuf Zeyn el-Abini, M.D., a native Iraqi, who at the same time was president of the Islamic Center in Cologne, and thus a member of the Moslem Brotherhood (cf. the article “Fundamentalisten-Filz”).

In this respect it is not surprising that the ideology of the AMGT is the same as that of the Moslem Brotherhood: Only a Qur’anic form of government is legitimate, Turkey too should become an Islamic republic.

DITIB: The “Turkish-Islamic Union of the Institute for Religion” is the European affiliate of the national board [Präsidiums] for religious affairs in Ankara, and thus an institution of the Turkish Republic. It was created in 1984 in order to steal some of the thunder from the autonomous groups that were striving for a re-Islamization of Turkey.

The ideology of the DITIB is just as fundamentalist as that of the other associations — with one exception: As an institution of the Republic of Turkey, it of course cannot demand the abolition of the republican form of government.

IKZ: The Union of Islamic Cultural Centers, started in 1973 by ABIDIN (cf. above, AMGT), is a special case. It is not backed by any party but rather by the dervish order of the Süleymanli, which has members positioned in various parties in Turkey. The IKZ does not represent orthodox Sunni High Islam, but rather the mystical secret doctrine of the Süleymanli, who simply regard Muslims who do not belong to the order as unbelievers.

Table II: Who’s Who (as of December 1988)

Abbrev Group name Address Ideology Parent group or cross-reference
ADÜTDF Avrupa Demokratik Ülkücü Dernekleri Federasyonu, (Türk-Federasyon for short), Federation of Turkish-Democratic Idealist Associations in Europe Türk-Federasyon, Münchener Str. 21, 6000 Frankfurt 1, 0 69/23 60 43 nationalist and Islamic Türkes MÇP, (see text)
  Avrupa Milli Görüs Teskilatlari (Milli Görüs for short), Union of the National Worldview in Europe AMGT, Merheimer Str. 229, 5000 Köln 60, 02 21/72 83 60 totally Islamic (“no separation between state and religion”) Erbakan’s RP (cf. text), strong affinity to the Moslem Brotherhood in the Federal Republic of Germany
DITIB Diyanet Isleri Türk-Islam Birligi, Turkish-Islamic Union of the Institute for Religion DITIB, Venloerstr. 160, 5000 Köln 30, 02 21/51 38 49 orthodox Sunni High Islam — but with no claim to theocracy Board for Religious Affairs, Ankara (DIYANET, cf. text)
IKZ Avrupa Islam Kültür Merkezieri Birligi, Union of Islamic Cultural Centers in Europe Verband der Islamischen Kulturzentren, Vogelsanger Str. 290, 5000 Cologne 30, 02 21/54 20 98 heterodox mystic dervish order with arcane doctrine; wants theocracy in Turkey Order of the Süleymanli in Turkey
(Kaplan) “Islamic Union of Cologne (and vicinity)”, “Union of Islamic Associations and Communities”, etc. (the most recent:), Islamische Union, Köln e. V., Neusser Str. 95, 5000 Köln 1, 02 21/73 27 22 extreme fundamentalist, seeks an Islamic revolution in Turkey after the Iranian example AMGT, Iran, to some extent MB
TIKDB Türk-Islam Dernekleri Birligi (Türk-Islam Birligi for short), Union of Turkish-Islamic Associations Türk-Islam Birligi, Mainzer Landstr. 94, 6000 Frankfurt 1, 0 69/74 82 72 split off from the ADÜTDF in 1987; increasingly passes itself off as Islamic parts of Özal’s ruling party ANAP

Kaplan: Cemalettin Kaplan, the “Khomeini of Cologne”, was originally from the governmental administration for religion in Turkey — like a lot of AMGT officials, incidentally. After the coup on September 12, 1980, he settled in the German Federal Republic (like today’s AMGT officials), was for a time in the AMGT on the “Board for Missions and [Sharia?] Law [Rechtsleitung]”, until he founded his own association (which continuously changes its name). It is unclear whether Kaplan’s association is a splinter group from or just a radical wing of the AMGT. Throughout Europe the association is organized exactly according to the same scheme as the AMGT. Kaplan promotes an Islamic revolution in Turkey modeled after Iran’s, sends audio and video cassettes back home as Khomeini formerly did, calling for the downfall of the regime. From time to time Radio Teheran grants him a program of his own that is broadcast in Turkey. In any event, the “split” by the radical Kaplan has one advantage: Since he has been around, the guardians of the Constitution hardly pay any attention to the AMGT, which is now tame in comparison.

TIKDB: In October 1987, under the former president of the ADÜTDF (see above), Serdar Musa Çelebi, about half of the local associations of the ADÜTDF split off and formed the TIKDB. The former leader of the pack of the “Gray Wolves” had recognized in time that Turkish nationalism is out, and since then he has vocally promoted Islam as a constitutive element of Turkish identity [Türkentum]. At the congress where it was officially founded in Koblenz on May 21, 1988, he was honored in a surprising way: seven representatives from Özal’s ruling party, the ANAP, had traveled specifically for the event, among them Özal’s chief advisor Mustafa Taşar.[3]

Recruitment

A revealing indicator of the increasing attractiveness of an Islamist [= fundamentalist Islamic] ideology is the development of the number of registered members (see Table III):

Table III: Potential spread of Turkish umbrella groups in the German Federal Republic

(Registered members of the central organizations in thousands)

  1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987
“Fundamentalists”:              
AMGT 3 9 12 19 19 19 19
IKZ 12 ? ? ? 18 ? ?
KAPLAN 2 2 2
TIKDB 5
“Nationalists”:              
ADÜTDF 23 18 15 10 10 10 5

“Semi-Fundamentalists”:

DITIB: (Instead of number of members, only the number of local branches is available)

Founded 1984, in 1987 — 520 local branches; in 1988 — 640 local branches

[captions on chart, from the top down]

[at solid line]: Approximate value, all religious associations + DITIB

[at dotted line]: (by AMGT’s own reports)

Total number of Fundamentalists

AMGT

IKZ

(for purposes of comparison: Nationalists ADÜTDF)

TIKDB

Kaplan

Between 1981 and 1987 the total number of members in associations with a strictly religious orientation rose from 15,000 (AMGT + IKZ) to 44,000 (AMGT + IKZ + KAPLAN + TIKDB; we do not take into account here AMGT’s own claim to over 60,000 members).

The development of the governmental DITIB cannot be reckoned in numbers of members, because its statutes provide only for legal persons (i.e. specific local associations); yet the increase alone in the number of local associations that have joined the DITIB, or were founded by it, is impressive: the central branch in Cologne was not founded until July 1984; in late 1988 the DITIB president Osman Nuri Gürsoy declared in the newspaper Türkiye Gazetesi (December 8, 1988) that 640 local associations belonged to the DITIB in the Federal Republic of Germany alone. That is approximately the same as the number of local associations of the autonomous unions.

The concern here is with orders of magnitude and illustrating a development: If the number of certified members in the autonomous umbrella groups (44,000) is added to the same number that are supposedly in the DITIB, then 88,000 Turks in the Federal Republic of Germany are registered members of a religious association (as of the end of 1988) as opposed to merely 15,000 in the year 1981. Consequently in 1988 every seventh adult male Turkish worker in the Federal Republic of Germany was organized in a religious association; in 1981 it was only one out of every 43.[4]

Activities of the Associations

This rapid growth has little to do with increased piety; the associations offer practical help in several departments of life, in competition with German offers — in keeping, moreover, with the reasoning that assimilation is to be prevented thereby. The most important services, which all the unions listed here have provided only for a few years now, are:

  • special kindergartens (with boys and girls separate and no contact with German children);
  • special youth organizations with group lessons, campgrounds and ideological training;
  • special sports leagues, whereby it is striking that martial arts are promoted almost exclusively (kung fu, Tae-kwon-do, boxing) and swimming is declared a “military exercise” (crossing rivers);
  • special student unions, in which only members are accepted, or through which new members are supposed to be gained;
  • women’s leagues and self-help groups as an alternative to German initiatives such as “Frauen helfen Frauen” [“Women Helping Women”]: the task of these women’s branches is instruction in Islamic family ethics, which ultimately also propagates and strengthens the priority of the patriarchy. Another purpose of the women’s groups is explicitly mission work among German women.
  • Legal and social counseling. The main area of this service for years now has been counsel and legal support in attempts to establish Islamic traditions contrary to German regulations currently in force. Examples of this are: recognition of passport photos of women in headscarves, the exemption of girls from school sports, and in individual cases also the question of legal recognition for a wife who has been married only in front of an imam as a second wife who can also draw a survivor’s pension (this has been granted in a few cases by German courts).
  • Special offices of the union for yearly payroll tax audits, all sorts of applications and translations by certified interpreters who are members of the union. Fees are not charged here.
  • Vocational-technical courses: besides instruction in craftsmen’s trades (often in collaboration with the local labor office or chamber of commerce — the forerunner in this is the DITIB) the AMGT introduced a new course in December 1988: training for journalists and photographers; the course lasts three months.
  • The AMGT plans its own labor union for Muslim Turks in the Federal Republic of Germany; it was supposedly founded as an offshoot of the Turkish union Hak-Iş, the personnel of which are closely connected with Erbakan’s Welfare Party (RP).
  • Political participation: in elections to foreigners’ boards in the local communities, the umbrella groups set up their own lists; in recent years most of these candidates successfully won seats on those governing bodies, earning more votes than Turks who were on a mixed list (e.g. lists of the Deutscher Gewerkschaftsbund [German League of Labor Unions]).
  • Business: At least the top-ranking officials of the umbrella groups (with the exception of the DITIB) run firms; the spectrum ranges from import-export via grocery chains and video production to banks and insurance agencies. (Cf. the essay “Ökonomische Basis”.)

In this way a confessionally [religiously] defined, isolated economic and social system develops within German society — a “parallel society”.

Ideology

With regard to the ideology of these unions, we intend to discuss only two areas, namely their attitude toward Turkey and their attitude toward German society; the first because of its relevance to foreign policy concerns — a few unions from time to time encumber relations between the two countries — and the second because of its relevance to domestic and social policy; integration/assimilation is rejected all the more vehemently, the cruder the image drawn of Germans as the enemy.

Attitude toward Turkey

By its very nature as a state organization of secularized Turkey, the DITIB cannot call for a theocratic government in that republic. The other unions demand the Islamization of Turkey, with varying but increasing vehemence (cf. the box “Statements about Turkey”).

[shaded box:] Statements about Turkey[5]

Turkey should become an Islamic republic:

For the ADÜTDF:

“As Turkish-Islamic idealists we guide our lives by the Qur’an, the tradition of the Prophet, the consensus of the scholars, and arguments from analogy. We reject reform and the modernization of the faith. We will continue to fight until a godly order is established.”

For the IKZ:

“It is a fight against disbelief, a battle for God. For the good of Suleymanism everything is permissible. Do not hesitate to lie and slander if the situation requires it. We are in a war, and in war everything is permissible.”

Cemalettin Kaplan:

“Sovereignty is found solely and exclusively with God.”

For the AMGT:

“The constitution of the Muslims is the exalted Qur’an. It acquired the force of law in the seventh century. This constitution was established by Allah. It is valid until the Last Day. All other constitutions are a rebellion against God and a form of disbelief.”

Slogans at an AMGT demonstration:

  • “Down with all political systems outside of Islam!”
  • “An Islamic Turkey will be founded.”
  • “Today Iran, tomorrow Turkey.”
  • “Power belongs to Allah alone, to the Prophet and to believers.”
  • “We will crush the skull of anyone who opposes Sharia law.”

Çelebi for TIKDB:

“The Turkish national concept is one hundred percent national; its source is Islam; Islam defines its borders. We want to be servants of Allah.” [end of shaded box]

Attitude toward the host society

In this regard all the unions exhibit an astounding congruence in their ideology, which ultimately is derived from the Qur’an. The centerpiece of its preaching about the distance to be maintained from the “unbelievers” consists of three verses from the Qur’an, variations on which appear in publications, addresses and on the banners of all unions, either literally or in paraphrases and allusions. The significant thing is that in all the unions (including the DITIB) these verses are always central to the discussion about models of integration.

Sura 5, verse 51 of the Qur’an prescribes :

“You believers! Do not take Jews and Christians as friends. They are friends with each other (but not with you). When one of you joins them, he belongs to them (and no longer to the community of believers).”

“To join them” is interpreted today, however, as external adaptation to the European way of life (including New Year’s celebrations) and any form of integration/assimilation (cf. the box “Statements about the host society”).

Besides this purely normative prohibition of amicable dealings with “unbelievers”, two other Qur’an verses are frequently cited, which give a reason for keeping one’s distance (and therefore in the case of Turkish migrant workers: self-isolation):

[shaded box:] Statements about the host society[6]

For the ADÜTDF:

“As Turks we want to win further concessions to our way of life, dignity and identity. This is what we mean by ‘integration’.”

For the AMGT:

“Europeans are atheists and idolaters, usurers, capitalists, socialists, Zionists, Communists and imperialists, always horny and drunk, adulterous and materialistic. They have sold themselves to the devil.

“They are agents and spies. They can appear as doctors, nurses, wise teachers or trade unionists, but they are all enemies of Islam.”

For DITIB, from the Handbook for Guest Workers:

“As soon as someone is far from his family, alone in a foreign land and has no one who could help him, and has to stay in the hospital or has landed in jail, then the missionaries see this as their opportunity.

“The missionaries strive to win the hearts of people in their immediate surroundings; that is why they give them presents and show them hospitality, e.g. they provide them with all sorts of good food, sweets and cake… They help the children of working families with their homework, they provide housing for the homeless, they give them advice when they go shopping and send flowers to the sick, give children’s clothing to newborns, and many other things. In that way they try to mislead non-Christian workers into Christianity. The Christian world from time immemorial has been the relentless persecutor of Islam.”

For the IKZ:

  • “We are a noble and aristocratic nation that has carried the flags of Islam for a thousand years. Thank God we are Muslims. That is why we will not assimilate in Germany — as the Poles once did.”
  • “Anyone who behaves like another nation, adopts its customs and celebrates its holidays, does not belong to this nation.”
  • “Every believer must know that the religions of other nations are empty and false and their members are unbelievers. Islam is the only right-believing religion.” [end of shaded box]
  • “Jews and Christians will not be happy with you as long as you do not follow their profession of faith” (Sura 2, verse 120).
  • “You believers! Do not take as your confidants and intimate friends people who are outside your community. They never tire of causing disorder among you, and would like affliction to befall you. Their own statements make their hatred plain enough, but the hatred and wickedness that they secretly harbor within them are much worse” (Sura 3, verse 118).

Whereas the first verse supposes missionary intentions as a matter of principle, the second postulates a general hatred of Christians for the Muslims. However, since the Qur’an is for Muslims unquestionably God’s word, it is understandable that they look at their German-Christian surroundings through the lens of the Qur’an and keep their distance from their host society. The Qur’anic prohibition against friendly dealings with non-Muslims, the warning against their principled missionary intentions and their wickedness becomes in the ideology of the Turkish-Islamic unions in the Federal Republic of Germany nothing short of a conspiracy theory that is spread even by the governmental DITIB — which in many German places is thought to be “moderate”. Thus the corresponding quotations in the box “Statements about the host society” cannot be dismissed as extreme positions of a few splinter groups: The governmental DITIB traffics in them too, and they are based on the Qur’an.

Summary and prospect

A clearly hostile image of German society is developing and is being preached to more and more Turkish migrant workers. Simultaneously, however, all the umbrella groups reinforce the desire to stay permanently in the Federal Republic of Germany; this then is possible only if the resident Turkish populace walls itself off from the Germans to a great extent — otherwise it would run into a conflict of faith. The more they reduce their contact with the Germans, the more the Turks have to set up their own system — this explains the ever wider spectrum of union activities, whose declared goal is the “preservation of identity”. Through the spread of fundamentalism the recreational clubs of the past have moved into the self-isolation of an all-encompassing “parallel society”. It is a long way from the recreational clubs of the former bachelors, via the plain mosque unions when they began to bring a wife and a child later, to a closed society after politics took them under its care and the “Khomeini factor” reminded them that Islam is more than quiet prayer in your little room: namely an all-encompassing rule of life willed by God that forbids any adaptation to, any friendly or trusting relations with “infidels” on an equal footing. The expression of this change of consciousness (or new self-awareness) and of this heightened sense of worth is their self-isolation today, which for the religiously reawakened is a more authentic home than secularist Turkey.

Yet this is only a transitional stage, admittedly a necessary one, in order to reach the final goal of Islamic fundamentalism: finally to create for oneself a homeland in which one can accomplish Allah’s will.

This is evident in the final examination of a four-year AMGT course on the Qur’an and the “right” answer to it:

“Q. What day in the future would be in your opinion the holiest day?”

“A: Our happiest day would be the day on which the Islamic State is founded and the Muslims get their Caliph again.”[7]

In the Turkish curriculum for religious instruction such lessons are lacking; Turkish fundamentalism needs exile in Germany.

Notes:

1.   NewspaperTürkiye Gazetesi, June 2, 1988.
2.   On this dynamic and its influence on assimilationcf. Karl Binswanger and Felhi Sipahioglu,Türkisch-islamische Vereine als Faktor deutsch-türkischer Koexistenz (Benediktbeuern: Riess, 1988), which also includes extensive details about the history, organizational structure, ideology and financing of the associations.
3.   Daily newspaperTercüman, May 23, 1988.
4.   In comparison to this, the Nationalists of the ADÜTDF with 5,000 members (which nevertheless meanwhile also claim to be fundamentalists) also become a negligible quantity, like the Turkish leftist-extremist scene as a whole, which between 1986 and 1987 shrank from 15,260 members to 10,950. The erosion continues;cf. Bundesministerium des Innern [Federal Ministry of Domestic Affairs], editor,Verfassungschutzbericht 87 (Bonn, 1988), 148.
5.   Additional quotations and references in Binswanger and Sipahioglu,Vereine, passim.
6.   See note 5.
7.   (Anonymous),“Was lernt man…” [“What is learned in a Qur’an school? Themes of a tendentious, extreme-Islamic curriculum,”] in Hans-Jürgen Brandt and Claus-Peter Haase, eds.,Begegnung mit Türken, Begegnung mit dem Islam [Encounter with Turks; Encounter with Islam], vol. IV/84 (Hamburg: EBV Rissen, 1984), 83-102, citation on p. 101, question 29.

“A Bloodless Genocide”

An interview with Paul Weston, the Chairman of the British Freedom Party, has just been published at the New English Review. Below are some excerpts:

A Future for Britain Free from Islamization: An Interview With British Freedom Party Chairman Paul Weston

by Jerry Gordon

The United Kingdom, or as Daily Mail pundit, Melanie Phillips calls it, Londonistan, has been mired in massive demographic change and concomitant Islamization brought on by its recent “open door” immigration policy. This was graphically evident in the July 7, 2005 London underground and bus system attack by four British Muslim suicide bombers who took the lives of more than 52 innocent victims and injured over 700. It was also reflected in the condoning of the more than 85 Shariah courts by the UK legal system and controversial Church of England head, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams. Deeply disturbing has been the de facto creation of what former Bishop of Rochester Michael Nazir-Ali called “no-go areas” where native Britons are not welcome, especially if they happen to be homosexual or Jewish.

[…]

The British Freedom Party mission is: to defend and restore the freedoms, traditions, unity, identity, democracy and independence of the British people, to establish full sovereignty over all our national affairs by restoring the supremacy of the British Parliament, to withdraw from the European Union, to promote democratic British nationalist principles, to promote the social, economic, environmental and cultural interests of the British people and to preserve and promote the ancestral rights and liberties of the British people as defined in the British Constitution.

Prominent among the social and economic issues in the 20 point platform program of the British Freedom Party are:

  • Introduce a US style First Amendment guaranteeing Free Speech.
  • Leave the profoundly undemocratic European Union.
  • Abolish the Human Rights Act, which benefits only foreign criminals/terrorists.
  • Halt any further immigration for a period of five years.
  • Deport foreign criminals, seditious dual nationality Islamists and illegal immigrants.
  • Abolish all multicultural and equality quangos (quasi-nongovernmental organizations financed by the government yet acting independently of the government).
  • Halt and turn back all aspects of the Islamization of Britain, including Shariah finance.
  • Drastically reduce crime — criminals should fear the consequences of their behavior.
  • Repair the damage wreaked by the progressive educational establishment.

Paul WestonPaul Weston is the current chairman of the British Freedom Party. He identified himself as a “classical liberal” in an increasingly illiberal country. He resides in central London where he runs a property development/investment company. Weston stood for the UK Independence Party (UKIP) in the 2010 general election for the constituency of Cities of London & Westminster. He left the UKIP in 2011 due to the party’s failure to confront Islam. Weston assumed the chair of the British Freedom Party in Nov 2011 after ensuring that any founding officers with previous BNP connections stood down.

Weston has conferred with many leading members of the trans-Atlantic counter-jihad network at the Brussels Counter Jihad Europa Conference in October 2007. He discussed their importance to Britain and the West on the Gates of Vienna website. He maintains friendships and a common ideological agenda with Freedom Party leaders on the Continent. He is a self-described fan of the Hon. Geert Wilders of the PVV, The Freedom Party in The Netherlands. Weston spoke at the Amsterdam Free Speech Rally in October 2010 on behalf of the International Free Press Society.

In February 2012 Weston crossed the Atlantic and gave several acclaimed presentations in Nashville, New York and Toronto. (See Weston’s speech before a private audience in Nashville in the current NER edition). He was also recognized at a session of the Tennessee State legislature.

[…]

Weston has set the British Freedom Party on a course for fielding a party list of candidates in local council elections in 2012 to gain recognition for future general elections. While the Party’s expectations remain low about the outcome of these elections, the reception it has received has generally been favorable.

We had the good fortune to interview Weston prior to his leaving Toronto on the final leg of his return to the UK.

Gordon:   Paul Weston, thank you for consenting to this timely interview.
Weston:   Thank you for affording me this opportunity.
Gordon:   What are the origins of the British Freedom Party?

Weston:   It was set up in 2010 as an offshoot from the British National Party. It was an offshoot because the four founders were expelled from the party because they rejected the whites’ only policy of the British National Party. They believed that culture, not color, was the important thing in Britain especially multi-cultural Britain. We can have one culture and it’s not important about what color or race you come from. So they set this up having been expelled and we have rolled on from there. (Editor’s note: All original British Freedom Party founders from the British National Party stood down when Weston became Chairman.)
Gordon:   What is the current relationship with the English Defense League and its leader Tommy Robinson?
Weston:   We have been in talks with Tommy for a number of months now and we support the English Defense League in principle. We are not going to have some sort of signed alliance with them. However, in principle we support them because the working class in Britain has been completely betrayed by the Labour party. It’s the working class of course who are protesting the loudest. Although the Labour party claims to act in the best interest of the working class in Britain, they certainly don’t. We decided that if we were going to become political we would certainly support an unwritten alliance with the English Defense League.
Gordon:   What is the present status of the British Freedom Party with regard to party registration, organization and preparations for fielding a slate of candidates in the 2012 local elections?
Weston:   We are fully registered with the electoral commission. In terms of organization, clearly we are a very new party. Nevertheless, we already have some 20 regional officers working, and they are preparing a slate of candidates for the 2012 elections. These are the local council elections you are talking about, not the general election. We are going to stand for election. How many, we are not quite sure yet. We are going to get as many as we possibly can and hopefully gain some recognition. You know, we are not really expecting to do terribly well, because no one knows who we are yet, but this will be good for us in terms of getting our name out. Good for us in terms of making sure our policies are actually recognized by the electorate.
Gordon:   You characterize the British Freedom Party as being centrist and affirming traditional British values. What do you mean by that and could you give us some examples?
Weston:   We are determined not to be labeled far-right because there is nothing far-right about us at all. I believe we are centrists. I mean, for example, we want to introduce a U.S. style First Amendment guaranteeing free speech. There is nothing right-wing about that. It’s a very central policy. We want to leave the undemocratic European Union which I think is a semi-totalitarian organization. We can’t vote the commissioners out. We certainly didn’t vote them in, so there is nothing far-right about that. In terms of affirming traditional British values we promote morality, marriage, the family and the community. All good healthy things, which is why I reject the far-right label. These are traditional British values and traditional British norms. As far as I am concerned we are centrists, and we refuse to be labeled far-right by the far-left that now control much of the media in Britain.
Gordon:   What are some of the more significant points in the British Freedom Party platform?
Weston:   It comes down to multi-culturalism and mass-immigration, which I think are the more significant ones. We are a tiny little island. Less than one percent of the world land mass, less than one percent of the world population. We have effectively opened the doors to billions of people who are poor. They come from the third world, and we have a very generous welfare state. If you do those things, if you open the doors to all of these people from around the world, you are going to be swamped. We say no more mass immigration. This is one of our central points.
Gordon:   Do you think the platform of the British Freedom Party will attract voters in the UK?
Weston:   They had a survey late last year which was aimed more at the British National Party than anything else, because we didn’t exist then. They asked the question: If you had a political party that rejected multi-culturalism, that wanted to put an end to mass immigration and promote British values, would you vote for it? The majority of people said “yes”, they would. They were then asked the following question: Why given some of the policies of the British National Party, would you not vote for the British National Party? They said the British National Party has a leader who is a Holocaust denier, and that it has a history of genuine racial bigotry. They would love to see a party that emulated some of the British National Party policies, but not these absolutely terrible, racist, antisemitic views that the British National Party leadership holds. Among the rank and file British National Party people there are some very nice people. However, the leadership is absolutely rotten and corrupt to the core and as I say, antisemitic and genuinely racist.
Gordon:   The UK has an unwritten constitution. How can you implement a U.S. style First Amendment with what we value here, freedom of worship and guarantees of free speech?
Weston:   You know, we don’t have a written constitution, but we do have legislation. It is quite simple just to introduce and pass legislation saying that you will not be censored for speaking the truth, no matter that the truth might offend other people. If you do say these things, you will not be tried under hate crime laws, you won’t go to prison. Nick Griffin of the British National Party was tried for saying that Islam was a wicked faith. He predicted the bombings which actually occurred in 2005, the London transport suicide bombings. He predicted that the bombers would come from an area within 20 miles of where he was making his speech, and sure enough, they did. Nevertheless, he was still tried for inciting racial hatred. When they couldn’t get him on that charge, because the defense was Islam is not a race, it’s a religion, they introduced a new law about inciting religious hatred and they tried him again. These are not the marks of a free and democratic country. Roger Scruton, the philosopher, said some time ago that when words no longer have the desired affect, then words will be replaced by deeds.” Freedom of speech is an outlet; it is a pressure relief valve that allows us to state our views, and to do so in a calm, rational and non-violent manner. If they clamp down on this, and they push us under the normal levels of discourse, then you are going to get huge amounts of pressure building. It is absolutely imperative that we introduce legislation that guarantees our free speech.
Gordon:   The British Freedom Party believes that there are troubling demographic and economic trends in the UK. What are they?
Weston:   This all comes from the last Labour government, that essentially just opened the doors completely, and the resulting demographics are one of these touchy subjects. Even The Guardian newspaper is now admitting that by 2060 the traditional native British are going to be an ethnic minority in their own country. They talk about this across all age groups. The majority of the native British are aged over 50 and the vast majority of the new immigrants are aged under 50. Below the age of 40 we may become an ethnic minority by 2030. To me, this is population replacement and in non-polite terms it is a bloodless genocide. It is ethnic cleansing. A deliberate dilution of the native population by political means.
Gordon:   What motivated the UK Labour and Conservative parties to open up immigration leading to the influx of Muslims?…

Read the rest at the New English Review.

Day Labor

Shovel work


The following joke is based on a German-language version posted at Gegenstimme. Many thanks to JLH for translating it:

An old Arab living in Detroit has a vegetable garden that he would like to dig over, so he can plant potatoes. He is too old to face the task, and his only son lives in Paris. With sadness, he writes his son an e-mail.

Dear Ahmed,

I am very sad. I would like to dig over my garden so I can plant potatoes, but I am too old now. I am sure that if you were here, you could do it for me.

Your Father

He receives an e-mail in reply:

Dear Father,

Please, on no account touch the garden. It is where I buried “the object”.

Ahmed

The following morning, the old Arab’s house is surrounded by units of the US Army, the FBI and Homeland Security, who take possession of his back yard and dig up every millimeter of the garden, but find nothing. That night, the old man receives another e-mail:

Dear Father,

I assume that by now your garden is completely dug over and you can plant potatoes. It was the best I could do.

Ahmed

Gates of Vienna News Feed 2/28/2012

Gates of Vienna News Feed 2/28/2012Mitt Romney won Republican presidential primaries tonight in both Michigan and Arizona. He edged out Rick Santorum, and left Newt Gingrich and Ron Paul far behind, enhancing his standing as the front-runner.

In other news, a German court has ruled that the fast-reaction committee set up to handle the euro crisis and oversee the European Financial Stability Fund is illegal and unconstitutional. It called for the German parliament to play a larger role in budgetary decisions.

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

Thanks to C. Cantoni, Derius, Egghead, Fjordman, Insubria, Kitman, Nick, Srdja Trifkovic, and all the other tipsters who sent these in.

Notice to tipsters: Please don’t submit extensive excerpts from articles that have been posted behind a subscription firewall, or are otherwise under copyright protection.

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.

Purdah at the Hair Salon

How far must the owner of a hair salon go to provide a “reasonable accommodation” for devout Muslim women?

This news report from Quebec discusses the problem of female Muslim customers who insist that their hair be styled in seclusion, hidden away where males cannot possibly see them. The owner of the salon describes the difficulties involved, which may even include an architectural redesign of his building to cater to their needs.

Many thanks to Bear for the translation, and to Vlad Tepes for the subtitling:

Zombie Mo and the Limits to Free Speech

Below is the latest installment of the “Zombie Mohammed” case in Pennsylvania. In an interview on CNN, the judge who dismissed the charge against the offended culture-enricher says quite clearly that there are limits to free speech under the First Amendment. Basically, anything that insults Muslims is off-limits.

In other words, as I said last week, sharia.

Many thanks to Vlad Tepes for uploading this video:

No Quran in Spain

Petición Prohibir el Corán en España


A Pakistani apostate now resident in Spain wants the Spanish government to ban the Koran. Below is the message we received yesterday from “Imran Firasat”, the owner of the Spanish website World without Islam:

I have formally asked the Spanish government through a legal petition for the prohibition of the Quran in Spain.

Many newspapers from Spain and some other European countries have published this news. I would like to request you to publish this very important and necessary news on your website please. We have to help each other in our fight against the Islamic dragon.

My petition calling for the prohibition of Quran is the sign of a grand revolution which we shall bring together against Islam. With this email I send you scans of the petition presented to the numerous institutions of Spanish Government. And below here I send you some links of media which published this news, and then after the links you can find the English translation of the news.

1.   Un pakistaní afincado en España pide formalmente “la prohibición del Corán”
2.   Un refugiado pakistaní residente en España pide la prohibición del Corán por incitar al odio y la violencia
3.   Pakistansk flygtning opfordrer til at Koranen skal forbydes

The English translation of the news:

A Pakistani settled in Spain asks formally “the prohibition of Quran”

“Imran Firasat” A Pakistani citizen with legal residence in Spain as a political refugee has presented an official petition to the numerous institutions of the Spanish government calling for the prohibition of the Quran.

Imran has formally sent the petition to the President of Spain, Parliament of Spain, ministry of the exterior and also to the ministry of the interior. A copy of the petition is attached at the end of this news.

In the document presented to the government of Spain, Imran reveals 10 points which will support his petition for banning the Quran:

1.   The Quran is not a sacred and religious book, but a violent book, full of hatred and discrimination.
2.   The Quran is a horrible book which provokes a community calls Muslims to undertake Jihad, kill innocent people and destroy the peace of the world.
3.   The Quran is responsible for all the terrorism we have seen in recent years in which thousands of people lost their lives.
4.   The Quran is a book which contains evil teachings and forces its believers to capture the entire world and total power at any price.
5.   The Quran is a book which legally permits and incites hatred and violence and for that reason it is not compatible with the modern world including Spain.
6.   The Quran is a book which directly discriminates between human beings.
7.   The Quran is a book which doesn’t allow freedom of expression nor religious freedom.
8.   The Quran is a book which causes women to suffer and be tortured by means of its being full of injustice and macho laws.
9.   The Quran is a book which rather than teaching unity, teaches disunity and in this way it doesn’t allow its believers to form friendships with those who are not Muslims, because in the eyes of Quran they are infidels.
10.   The Quran is a major threat to the free society of Spain. A book which clearly preach the messages of Jihad, killing, hate, discrimination and revenge. For that reason it can’t be compatible with the Spanish system in any sense. It is a book totally contrary to what the law and constitution of Spain say and it incites hatred and violence in our country.

The Breakdown of the Social Contract

Yesterday we ran a series videos by El Inglés about the epidemic of “grooming and pimping” in the UK. His analysis focused on the persistently inadequate response by CEOP, the police agency charged with protecting children from abuse and prosecuting those who abuse them.

Fourteen videos are a lot to go through, so for readers with limited time we’ll cut to the chase. Below is the final video of the series, in which El Inglés draws his conclusions about what is happening in Britain, and discusses what is likely to happen in the not-so-distant future:



El Inglés adds this note:

This is a belated introduction to the videos of mine that the Baron posted yesterday. As at least some readers of Gates of Vienna will know, I have been writing essays for some time now under the pseudonym of El Inglés. Recently I concluded that the time had come to branch out somewhat in terms of medium of communication. Hence these videos.

I understand that the content of the videos and their number and length combine to create quite a demanding viewing experience. However, I am confident that those who make the effort to watch the entire series, and give the matters discussed therein some thought, will gain from them quite as much as they might have done in the past from having read my essays. Whether that is a lot, a little, or absolutely nothing, will be a matter for the individual to decide.

It would be futile to try and predict what the effects of these videos might be. But it seems to me that the utter lack of interest the British state has in maintaining its side of the social contract between government and governed is rapidly forcing events towards the violent breakdown of civil order I have predicted in the past. We might as well understand what is happening, and what is sure to happen throughout all Muslim-infested areas of Western, Southern, and Northern Europe in the near future.

Anyone who is not interested in watching the whole series of videos — some of which are dry and technical — could perhaps watch just the last one to get a feel for the conclusions that I draw. They can then dip further back in or not, as they please, to see how and why I arrived at them.

CEOP links:

The earlier posts with the embedded videos:

Group 1
Group 2
Group 3
Group 4

The full series of YouTube videos:

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7
Part 8
Part 9
Part 10
Part 11
Part 12
Part 13
Part 14

The Children of the State

We reported last week on the case of Jessie Sansone, a young Canadian father who was arrested, strip-searched, and held in a police cell because his daughter drew a picture of a gun in her kindergarten class.

The incident is still causing a lot of uproar in the Canadian media. The authorities are sticking to their guns so far — “The incident was unfortunate and stressful for all involved, but the school and the police had no choice; they followed the proper procedures.”

Below are two videos from Canadian TV about the Sansone case. The first is from Ezra Levant’s program, and features a discussion with Mr. Sansone’s lawyer:



The second video is a brief interview with a school board superintendent. Pay special attention to the word “co-parent”:



Yes, it’s true: the State is the “co-parent” of your children. And don’t for a minute believe that you and the State are equal partners — when one parent disagrees with the other, who do you think has the ultimate authority?

Many thanks to Vlad Tepes for uploading these two clips. Don’t miss Vlad’s excellent take on this and related matters.

Gates of Vienna News Feed 2/27/2012

Gates of Vienna News Feed 2/27/2012The German interior minister said that Greece should be encouraged to abandon the euro, and that the Greek economy would have a better chance of recovery if it did. Not long after he made his remarks he was rebuked by Chancellor Angela Merkel, who said she disagreed with him.

In other news, the Spanish government has said that it will have no objection if Scotland joins the European Union after it gains independence. Some Spaniards, however, are concerned that such a move would encourage separatist movements in certain Spanish provinces, such as Catalonia.

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

Thanks to Fjordman, Insubria, JD, Paul Green, Steen, Vlad Tepes, and all the other tipsters who sent these in.

Notice to tipsters: Please don’t submit extensive excerpts from articles that have been posted behind a subscription firewall, or are otherwise under copyright protection.

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.

The Slow Mo Blog Roll Makeover

As many of you know, our blog roll has needing culling for many a moon. The Baron hasn’t been able to fit that task into his already overburdened schedule, and I can’t sit here long enough to begin, much less finish such a long task. Doing it piece-meal made a shamble of my good intentions.

But to the rescue came a very nice fellow, the admin for OilPrice.com. Like many others, he asked if we’d be willing to add his blog’s name to the list. I explained the problem of our deadwood and the Baron’s rule of no-new-additions-until-a-time-of substantial-subtractions…

When I told Mr. Stafford about the situation, he volunteered to do the necessary house-cleaning on the sidebar. Remarkable offer! He was saying he’d clean up the whole enchilada. Amazing.

For a normal person, this probably isn’t a difficult job, just tedious. And if Mr. Stafford had been dealing with a normal person, his work would’ve been up on our side bar late last year. However, I am an Obstacle in the Universe so the changes have been sitting in the Baron’s hands while he waits for me to do this post. He won’t do any large changes without informing readers about them.

I’ve long forgotten how many blogs are in that whole listing, but I do know many have been out of business for a long time. Eventually, marshalling the remnants of my mind, I had the Baron tell me again what Mr. Stafford needed to do to create a list of dead blogs in a format Da B could use on our template. Then I passed this protocol from the Baron onto our heaven-sent volunteer. In short order he returned the completed spread sheet. In fact, it was a remarkable turn-around time when you consider that he and his assistant had to visit each URL and make a judgment as to whether it was still viable. If I remember correctly, our definition of a closed blog was one that hadn’t been updated in the previous nine months or so.

So back came the completed spreadsheet — about ninety out-of-date websites in all, plus new URLs for old websites that had migrated to new addresses. And then…and then, the Baron and Mr. Stafford have waited patiently for this post to be written. The same way our donors are kept waiting for their acknowledgements to arrive.

Please, as a favor to our donor for his time and energy, visit Oil Price. A separate page has a free sign-up for a Market Intelligence Report. Go to the page to sign up for breaking information on energy news. Free information, and it’s interesting. I know, because we get it in our email.

In the period I’ve been reading the Oil Price site, they’ve changed the ‘skin’ quite a bit. The new version is visually pleasing, and sections are divided clearly. I clicked on one main story, “The Reasons for High Oil Prices“, to find an author I hadn’t noticed before. Her essay contains information I’d not seen before. In addition to the usual reasons for high costs (like Iran’s perturbations) the author says something rather stunning (the emphasis is mine):

Between 1983 and 2005, world oil supply rose by 1.64% per year. If world oil supply had continued to rise at that rate, oil production would have been about 5 million barrels a day higher in 2011 than it actually was. The fact that oil production has remained relatively flat since 2005 is the primary reason oil prices have continued to rise, except during the 2008-2009 recession. (This recession was to a significant extent caused by high oil prices…)

The amount of the oil shortfall is huge. It is far more than the amount of oil taken off-line by Libya, and more than Saudi Arabia’s supposed spare production capacity. Given the high price of oil, most of the missing oil seems to be oil that we do not have production capacity for.

Did you know that? I didn’t. But I do know why our production capacity sucks. Because of Obama’s refusals here and efforts of the greenies at a global level. It goes back well before Obama, this scandal of the ageing infrastructure of oil refineries. But he has made it worse by demonizing the producers. He saves his tax breaks for businesses he likes. Oil and coal don’t make his list.

In looking at the list of previous essays at the bottom of her post, I found this one, explaining the absolute necessity for the future of an abundant supply of cheap oil. That declaration would seem to be a no-brainer, but we have a president who has other ideas. He thinks we should use a substitute for oil….we should burn algae.

Yes, algae.

Here’s what he says in a recent, more-surreal-than-usual-speech:

Charles Krauthammer did a slam-bam sarcastic response to this idea:

Of course the (not so) secret reason behind this insanity is money: think of all the research and development funding Obama can hand out to his greenie supporters in return for campaign infusions. And this back-scratching isn’t even illegal. Tacky and ethically challenged, perhaps, but no one can prove anything.

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


I don’t cover our presidential news much. It’s too demoralizing to watch this man proclaim bizarre, trivial solutions to serious problems. Besides, others have better contacts and excel at the game.

I wish them well; I couldn’t do it and stay sane.

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


Don’t forget James Stafford’s energy website, Oil Price. com. I remain in his debt for taking on a task I couldn’t possibly have done.

On Paying Twice

Scrooge McDuckI can’t say that we’re as well off as Uncle Scrooge — no money bin for us! However, after our Winter Fundraiser we’re able to sit on that see-saw without dropping like a stone and whacking our butts on the cold hard ground.

The generosity of our readers continues to amaze us. We see it every fundraiser, but still, it’s not something we can really get used to. How do y’all do it? Times are tough, and your willingness to give so much in the middle of a deep recession is truly inspiring.

Our gratitude goes out to everyone who sent in a gift. They hail from the following locations (as of 8:30 tonight):

Stateside: California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New York, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Virginia

Near Abroad: Canada

Far Abroad: Australia, Belgium, British Virgin Islands, Croatia, Denmark, Finland, Ireland, Israel, Luxembourg, Norway, Slovakia, Slovenia, Sweden, and the UK

How’s that for Multiculturalism, Counterjihad-style?

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


Think about the resources that our adversaries can draw on. Not just the petrodollars that fund the Great Jihad itself, but the vast pool of wealth that the Left controls and contributes to aid its Islamic allies.

A donor in Sweden explained the situation succinctly in an email today:

Contributions from Sweden should be regarded against the fact that we are paying twice; see here.

That is a list of the state contributions to magazines with a “cultural” agenda. By sheer accident it so happens that almost all of them are extreme leftist and very agitatorial. Right-wing or centrist magazines are denied money with the exception of maybe three magazines.

So we are paying twice. Once with taxes to a hundred voices on the extreme left, and once to you for your brilliant work to provide some balance. After a long life I have some experience of distinguishing true honesty from fake honesty.

It is humbling to learn that a Swedish taxpayer — someone who has already paid out half or more of his income to fund the bloated Swedish welfare state — is willing to send a contribution to our blog.

It’s fortunate for us that there are a number of people like him in Europe, the USA, Canada, Australia, and even in Israel. Because receiving small individual donations seems to be the only way that a job like this can be done.

Considering the radioactive topics we cover here — the ones that earn us the epithet “racist” or “fascist”, and not just from left-wing writers — outside funding, even from conservative philanthropists or right-wing foundations, is not a viable proposition.

Contrast this situation with the billion or ten that George Soros routinely bestows on his favorite Progressive causes, and you get a feeling for what we’re up against.

However, we have one thing that the lefties don’t have: overwhelming agreement from the vast majority of ordinary Westerners, those who are looking for a way to depose the dominant Politically Correct paradigm.

This is why we will prevail in the end. It may take several generations, and be preceded by untold suffering and misery, but the ultimate victory is assured.

Whatever is contrary to Tao will not last long.

(Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching, Chapter 55)

Allah’s Hammer

Cultural Enrichment News


Forget Thor — a servant of Allah was the one wielding the hammer tonight in Norway. A young drunken culture-enricher hijacked a bus using a hammer.

Our Norwegian correspondent The Observer has translated a news report about the incident. He includes this note:

This article is about a bus hijacking in Skien (approximately 2.5 hours southwest of Oslo) which occurred a couple of hours ago. The hijacker has been described as a Palestinian male.

The driver of the bus was visibly upset after the incident, and I don’t blame him. In 2003 another bus driver, Audun Bøland, was stabbed to death by an Ethiopian asylum seeker.

There have also been other episodes of cultural enrichers going berserk on board public transportation in Norway. Most noteworthy are the Kato air incident in 2004, when an Algerian man tried to bring down a small-engine passenger plane in Northern Norway with an axe, and of course the tram incident in Oslo in 2004 when a Somali male stabbed one passenger to death and critically injured six others.

The translated article from VG.no:

Eyewitness: The hijacker was furious when we disembarked

SKIEN / OSLO (AP) When the passengers disembarked the bus, the hijacker shouted, “Don’t let them off, don’t let them off.”

Sandra Svendsen (15) was on the M3 bus, en route between Skien and Porsgrunn, when it was hijacked at Klyve around 19.30 pm on Monday evening.

“A man came on board. He refused to pay for the ticket and started arguing with the driver,” Svendsen says to VG nett.

He then somehow managed to grab hold of a hammer mounted on the wall and began to threaten the driver. The other passengers were not allowed to get off the bus.

“The hijacker told the driver not to drop below 60 km/h [approx 40 miles per hour]. It was a frightening experience,” Svendsen says.

Was furious

The hijacker kept walking around the bus and sat down in different seats.

“He also tried to cover himself with a hood to conceal his face. He appeared to be quite intoxicated,” Svendsen says.

After a few minutes, a man shouted that he had to get off to pick up his kids. The bus driver was allowed to stop. When the bus came to a halt all the passengers on board disembarked.

“This made the hijacker furious. He shouted to the driver: ‘Don’t let them off, don’t let them off.’”

On the run

After Sandra and the other passengers had left, the driver was forced to continue on. At one stage the police had no idea where the bus was.

“The bus was eventually recovered at Bjørnstad. The alleged offender was arrested approximately 500 meters from the site,” the leader of operations from Telemark police precinct, Jens Arne Bærland told VG Nett.

The arrested man is 24 years old, and according to the police he is of foreign descent. He was arrested at 19.49 pm.

“The hijacker recently escaped from a psychiatric institution. He is now being examined by a doctor, and we hope to be able to question him thoroughly in the morning,” Bærland says.

The 24-year-old has acknowledged to police that he was the one responsible for the hijacking.

Upset driver

No one were physically injured in the bus drama, but the driver is upset and is currently being looked after by his employer and health care professionals.

“He is clearly shaken by the incident,” Bærland says.

Police are appealing to passengers that were onboard the hijacked but to contact them

“We want to talk to them,” Bærland says.



Thanks to Kitman for the title of this post.

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