Another successful fundraiser has ended. As I said to one donor, it’s like throwing a dinner party: even if the RSVPs are in place and all is ready, it’s still a bit scary to think — omg…what if no one shows up?? I agree, that’s not rational, but I’ll bet every hostess has experienced fleeting moments of the same “what if…”

As usual, my fears weren’t grounded in reality either. There was, so to speak, a wealth of donors…the wealth of acknowledgments will follow a bit more slowly.

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I offered to write the wrap-up for this, our week-long consideration of the two kinds of diversity available: the first, dictates passed down from on high, gives you the rules and reasons for a poisonous and Politically Correct Diversity. That’s the kind, when you’re subjected to its strictures, makes you feel large waves of anomie. That is its purpose, or one of them. The other diversity, the organically grown (heh), bottom-up diversity, leaves you feeling in control of your own life. It’s an open-ended experience and one which is becoming all too rare.

Long-time readers of Gates of Vienna sometimes write to mourn the passing of the old days, back when we didn’t moderate comments, but simply deleted the occasional troll. Several people have observed a drop in the numbers of comments and in the range of the conversation since we moved to moderating every single thing that comes through the Gates. They sigh for the old days and the old dynamic.

So do we. But the ripples from the Breivik massacre spread far and wide, causing many changes. One of the immediate casualties was our comments function. We didn’t think about it ahead of time, but as soon as the first Scandinavian drool began to puddle and then flow under the Gates, we shut down the Input section.

It was all too obvious this horrendous slaughter had unhinged more than a few people up there. Frustrated in their attempts to scourge us publicly on our blog they resorted to emails instead. Oh my. You have to wonder at the stability of those who hate so intensely. No one who inscribed emails in acid admitted to having a relative to mourn — that would have been understandable — and, in fact, few of them touched on the central tragedy in Oslo at all.

As we’ve said repeatedly, civil disagreements are fine. But they don’t seem to teach rhetoric in schools anymore. If you rule name-calling and ridicule off the floor people become mute. Where comments aren’t moderated, the license of anonymity can quickly descend to a primitive and obsessional and regressive hatred. Sadly, I don’t think people like that can help themselves. As hemmed in as they are in their daily lives by an increasingly oppressive level of Diversity Rules and Political Correctness, in the half-light of a comments section their anonymity becomes a license to unload on their antagonists.

Since we can avoid having our readers subjected to this primitive hatred, we do so. On occasion one of us will miss a key word and then be forced to delete the rule-breaker. Or sometimes people don’t seem to understand how civil rhetoric functions and become frustrated in their attempts to comply with an unfamiliar environment. Many American commenters with a whole lot to say cannot grasp the notion that their First Amendment rights are rights only in potential. They are never a license to unload at will. Some have left here in a huff, absolutely certain we have violated their Constitutional rights, by heaven! What they never seem to notice is that there is no one to whom they can report us for this violation. That should be a clue, no?

The disgorgement we see — and hide from you — seems to come and go. Who know why? The phases of the moon? The news? Their own personal demons?

Today there was an essay in a small magazine on the subject of Comment Trolls. It covered the problems well, better than most. Here is what the author says:

The trolls of the internet: A guide

The sheer nastiness of some nameless commenters is poisoning discourse on the Web. Does it have to be this way?

What are trolls?

They’re the anonymous provocateurs who flood the internet with inflammatory insults, threats, and profanity. The term originates from the fishing technique of dragging a baited hook behind a moving boat; someone who uses offensive language to provoke a response is said to be “trolling.” The practice has existed since the earliest days of the internet, and was long considered to be harmless, if annoying. But in recent years, trolls have become a scourge.

“Scourge” is apt. Especially if the author is referring to the level of inflammatory insults and threats. One has only to visit a site without moderation to realize how degraded it has become.

Reasoned political discussion is often so overwhelmed by venomous, tit-for-tat name-calling that websites have to shut down their comment boards, as hundreds and even thousands of invective-filled responses pour in. On sites across the internet, liberals are regularly slammed as “libtards” and conservatives as “teabaggers”; comparisons to Auschwitz, Hitler, and the Nazis run rampant. Letting people comment about a racial controversy like the Trayvon Martin/George Zimmerman case, said Slate.com political reporter David Weigel, has become the equivalent of “putting out a freshly baked pie on the windowsill, smack dab in the middle of Racistville.”

Right again. I may post about the Zimmerman trial but when I do, comments will be closed for that very reason. The Baron can tick off on his fingers the topics sure to draw the fighters.

So: the parameters are predictable, as are the arguments. The worst thing about a free-for-all is that no one is required to think, only to react, and the reaction is often thermonuclear.

The author continues, but with a disappointingly cherry-picked example:

What motivates these people?

Trolling gives its anonymous practitioners the catharsis of venting forbidden feelings and ideas without suffering any consequences. On the internet, you can cuss out a stranger with even more vigor and impunity than you can a bad driver from the safety of your own car. “The enjoyment comes from finding a context in which you can let go, take a moral vacation,” says psychologist Tom Postmes of Exeter University in the U.K. “Trolls aspire to violence, to the level of trouble they can cause in an environment.” That prospect is particularly appealing to disaffected men in their late teens and 20s, but they are hardly alone: CNN tracked down a troll putting anti-Islamic screeds online and found that he was a 39-year-old father in Belgium. Rider University psychologist John Suler says an “online disinhibition effect” allows people who might never utter a hateful word in person to unleash withering vitriol on comment boards. Politics, race, gender, and religion all serve as lightning rods for troll rage…

I don’t buy that one example about the Belgian. The haters and killers in Belgium are not the natives. But there goes CNN again — the infamous channel that sold its integrity to stay in Iraq while Saddam continued his murder and mayhem. Amazing they’d have the chutzpah to cover the subject at all.

Even with that little knife, it’s still a thoughtful essay. See here to find the other sub-headings:

• Why have comments at all?
• Could legislation deter the trolls?
• So are sites powerless to halt personal attacks?
• Cleaning up after the trolls

That last section made me glad all over again that we’re as small as we are.

Note from the Baron

For our spring fundraiser, this is the final line-up of locations (through June 5):

Stateside: California, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, N. Carolina, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas, Virginia, W. Virginia, and Washington

Near Abroad: Canada

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

Thanks, y’all!

The following report was sent by our English correspondent (also regular reader and occasional commenter) Bewick from somewhere north of the Mersey.

His account is a reminder that although Cultural Enrichment is most pernicious when the enrichers are Muslims, mass immigration to Western countries from any part of the Third World is not something to be desired. Replacing native Europeans with Sikhs, Hindus, Taoists, or animists from Uganda may bring on cultural death more slowly, but it is cultural death nonetheless.

Here’s what Bewick had to say:

I have Sikh friends in the village where I live, both born in the UK. They run the village shop. Mostly totally fine and totally integrated.

The wife is usually OK but seriously moody. This last weekend she — and her kids, but not hubby — followed Indian custom (intended purely for visiting the next village — easy) by driving for five hours each way from Newcastle to London (not easy) to visit the intended wife of a nephew, on Jubilee weekend no less. Serious traffic problems. Since the youngest is just four I find that hard to contemplate. I wouldn’t have done it to my kid at that age. How wonderful is culture! Village custom extended to global world however inappropriate.

I visited the shop today to be confronted by a seriously unresponsive and moody woman. Asked her if she watched anything of the Jubilee, to be told, “What use are they? The monarchy should be abolished. The country is broke, and we spend on this!” I’m a monarchist, so I was seriously affronted, but kept my temper. (The very idea of a political president seems totally wrong.) I regret to say that I actually thought “who the hell are you to tell me? I’m English.”

I think I just became a racist.

Generally, though, she is lovely — but not today, and now I’m wary.

I then asked if she intended to watch the concert tonight. No. If Eastenders (crap soap) wasn’t on, then she’d be watching the Indian channels.

That told me! She does make sure that her kids can speak Punjabi. Her mother-in-law, more than forty years here, still hardly speaks any English.

The interesting thing is that she has only visited India once, for two weeks and to the ancestral village. Other, indigenous English, people in the village have visited India many times and for far longer overall, and visited far more places. It seems that you can take the woman out of India (except she was never in India) but you can never take India out of the woman.

She claims that the Crown Jewels were “stolen” from India. That may or may not be true of the Koh-i-Noor Diamond, but that is only featured in the Crown of the deceased Queen Mother.

David Cameron is reported to be looking to return it anyway. Why? Surely sixty years of aid should have been compensation, plus the billions leeched from Britain to India/Pakistan by families in the UK. They earn the money here, but send it to be spent in India, and so disbenefit to the UK economy.

The rest of the stones were either gifted or date somewhere before the 19th century, and so not stolen from India. Koh-i-Noor? Well, once owned (stolen) by a Muslim ruler so, for all time the property of Islam. (Did I get that right?)

They regularly complain that “this country is crap” (perhaps we all do that to some extent). I routinely respond by asking how India is better. No answer, except to wrongly claim that income tax is not payable in India. They do admit, though, that roads and education and much else are defective in India, and that maybe Britain is better. But it doesn’t change their overall view.

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As a matter of interest, I researched the cost of the Royal Family.

£40m a year = 66p per person per year (roughly $1). That cost includes all the costs of state and similar visits which would, without a Royal Family, have to be hosted by a President. The Italian President alone costs every Italian £1.24 a year. Our 66p covers many Royals, so I reckon we get value and without corruption.

Some years ago the Queen “temporarily” surrendered all Crown Estates to the Government in return for the “Civil List” which is part of the £40m. The Government makes £200m a year from the Crown Estates, so are well in profit. Quite apart from the estimated £400m to £1b generated to the country from “Royal-related” tourism.

UK aid to India is, at £280m a year, seven times as much as the cost of the Royal family, and costing every inhabitant of the UK £4.90 a year. Didn’t win us an order for fighter jets, though — that went to the French. I know what I get for my 66p a year; I see no return from the £4.90 to India.

The very idea of a politician as Head of State, someone like Blair, is abhorrent to me. Give me the political neutrality of Her Majesty any day. My Sikh friend sneered at the idea that the Queen does any work. A full twelve-hour day in an office or in meetings and visits isn’t “work” in her opinion. It seems only stacking shelves and standing behind a counter chatting to customers is work.

I know one thing for sure: she would crumble if faced with the same workload. She gets stressed (really stressed) if a lighting strip blows and moans that “nothing works in this country”.

— Bewick

There was a report in last night’s news feed about a man in Berlin who murdered his wife and threw her severed head from the roof deck of an apartment building. It’s no surprise that none of the MSM stories mentioned the ethnicity of the murderer, but given the nature of the crime, the presence of cultural enrichment wasn’t hard to guess.

Our German correspondent Tiedar sends further details about the incident, which was even more gruesome than yesterday’s reports indicated. Readers who are sensitive to descriptions of grotesque brutality are advised not to read below the jump.

According to Tiedar:

The article reported a killing and a dismembered corpse in Berlin Kreuzberg (Kreuzberg is a part of Berlin). A 32-year-old man (Orhan S.) was on the roof deck with two knives in front of him where lay his beaten wife (Sema S.), and behind the windows his children could be seen. He held the two knives, shouted “Allahu akhbar”, cut off the woman’s head, and threw it into the yard.

The police confirm only that the corpse had been cut into pieces. Residents said that she was very tolerant because her husband had a mistress in the building complex, and had two children with her. His wife had often forgiven him.

A few days ago she threw her unfaithful husband out, and that might have been her death penalty, someone on the third floor said.

The police don’t comment on the rumor that her husband was taking drugs or mentally ill, but many people try to lead the murder back to this rumor, because otherwise no one would be able to commit such a crime.

In the comment section there is a comment that hits the mark:

“[…] Sie scheinen aber Blind zu sein wenn sie die ganzen Beziehungs- und Ehrenmorde sowie die Herkunft der Täter/Opfer totschweigen wollen. Das löst keine Probleme. Wenn etwas mit Rechtem Hintergrund oder auch nur Verdacht geschieht ist das Geschrei sofort riesig. Gibt es wieder mal Massenhetzen von Migranten oder Angriffe auf die Polizei wird weggeschaut, gerade von der Mainstreampresse. Da muss man sich in lokalen Zeitungen einlesen. Traurig sowas.”

“You might be blind if you want to hush up all the relational- and honour-killings as well as the origin of perpetrator/victim. This doesn’t solve the problems. If something bad happens involving people a with right-wing background, or if there is only a suspicion, there is a lot of yelling. But if there is mass predation by migrants or attacks on the police the mainstream press look the other way. You have to read it in the local newspaper. It’s a pity.”

In another source it’s reported that as his wife lay on the roof deck Orhan cut into her throat, carved her face, and removed her right breast. While doing so he shouted “Allahu akhbar”. A neighbour said that not only her head was in the background, but also her breast was there.

His relationship with another women is described thus: He had two children with an Iranian woman named Leyla. Sema (the victim) wanted to separate after so much harm and pain. According to a friend, Sema was pregnant, but this couldn’t be confirmed by a CAT Scan.

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

The Austrian city of Salzburg is facing an increasingly Islamic future. The city’s religious makeup will become much more diverse over the next two decades, with some of the changes due the immigration of German Protestants. The largest factor in the current demographic shift, however, is the influx of Turkish immigrants and their descendants.

Many thanks to Hermes for translating this article from Salzburger Fenster:

Salzburg in 2030: An increasing religious diversity

The number of Catholics decreases to 50%

The number of Muslims will increase steadily in the country until 2030, and also the number of Protestants. More and more of them are taking leading positions.

[Photo caption: Empty churches — 60 years ago 9 out of 10 inhabitants of Salzburg were Catholics. It’s likely that by 2030 only half of the population will remain so.]

The number of Catholics amongst the population of Salzburg will continue to decrease. And remarkably. This is what calculations made by the Robert Jungk Library for questions regarding the future in Salzburg predict. “We in Salzburg have now reached the low level of 50% Catholic. We’ll see this trend also in the other districts until 2030”, a member of the JBZ, Stefan Wally explains. The reasons are many. On one hand, in recent decades many citizens of Salzburg have turned away from the Catholic church (In 1951 89% were Catholics, in 2001 only 74%). On the other hand, the arrival of Islam in Salzburg in the 1970s with the foreign workers — a religion to which about 10% of the population currently belong to. It is mainly because the Turkish families have more children on average than the Austrians that the number of Muslims increases so notably. This will not change in the near future. Over the long term the birth rate should decrease also in the Turkish community. “In Turkey women have only 2.1 children because of increasing living standards. This also happens in Salzburg”, Wally says.

The researchers of the JBZ see that the immigrants and their children and grandchildren will take new positions towards the year 2030: Their formative level gets higher. Children from immigrants are proportionally overrepresented in business schools and academies. “They will occupy leading positions in an ever increasing number of companies in the next 20 years”, Wally says. The youth organizations of the ÖVP and the SPÖ in Salzburg are already led by young citizens from Salzburg with Arab or Turkish roots.

Moreover, the biggest immigrant community in the country, the German Protestants (they were 4.3% in 2001) will cause an increase in the number of Protestants in Salzburg.

The news feed is inexplicably light tonight. Perhaps our tipsters have been so busy with Queen Elizabeth’s Diamond Jubilee that they have been unable to send in the usual tips.

A blogger in Kuwait has been sentenced to ten years in prison for blasphemy. His crimes included sending out tweets about Mohammed, his companions, and Aisha. He also said disparaging things about the regimes in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain.

On a lighter note, a judge in the trial of Anders Behring Breivik was caught on camera playing solitaire on his laptop during witness testimony.

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

Thanks to C. Cantoni, Egghead, Fjordman, JP, Salome, 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.

Recent intelligence reports indicate that Hezbollah is moving terrorist operatives to — or activating existing resources in — Brazil and other South American countries. One of the reported targets is the Israeli Embassy in Sao Paulo.

Many thanks to Hermes for translating this article posted late last month at “De olho na Jihad” (“An eye on Jihad”):

Threats from Hezbollah put the Israeli Embassy in Sao Paulo on alert

Eugenio Goussinsky / special report for O Estado — On the basis of secret information, the Israeli government warned its general consulate in Sao Paulo about the possibility of an attack from the extremist Lebanese group Hezbollah in the capital. The diplomatic representation there declared a state of alert.

The consul said he received instructions to tighten security measures in the areas near the consulate. The information was given to the newspaper Estado by the Israeli consul, Ilan Sztulman, who confirmed having received instructions from his government to secure the environs of the consulate and the Jewish institutions in Sao Paulo. He himself declared that he changed his daily routine and cancelled meetings for security reasons. “We are on high alert. We take extreme security measures at the daily operations in the consulate and at the organizations of the Jewish community,” the diplomat in charge since 2010 said on May 23.

Sztulman affirmed that the Brazilian government was already informed about the possibility of a terrorist attack and strengthened security at the borders, the ports, and the airports. “We have indications that Hezbollah wants to resume their attacks against Latin America. Brazil is one of two countries which are at risk. When the alert is given to me, I’m not told exactly what is all about. The information sources are very secretive. I received information about a major threat, and a request for measures to increase security”.

The sidewalk in front of the consulate, which is located in a building in the southern part of the city, is being heavily surveilled. In order to enter the place, which has a heavily reinforced glass door at the main entrance, one has to undergo a thorough checking of all personal objects from coats and belts to pens using a metal detector. It is forbidden to enter with backpacks or any king of bag, not even into the security room. Electronic devices are taken away and given back only when leaving.

Last week the Italian newspaper Corriere Della Sera highlighted that high-ranking sources from the Israeli government confirmed the arrival of Hezbollah members, supported by Iran, in South America. According to the report, Bolivia and Colombia could be other possible destinations.

In order to support his fears, Sztulman recalled the attacks which happened in the 1990s against the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires, which left 29 dead, and against the Jewish organization AMIA, in which 85 died. Israel and USA named Hezbollah responsible for those actions and affirmed that the group received financial support from Iran, which rejected the accusations.

In spite of the suspicions from the Argentinean Public Ministry, investigations were not conclusive. “It was hard to prove that Iran would carry out an attack in a sovereign country even before those two terrorist attacks happened”, the consul explained.

In spite of the upcoming agreements between Iran and the IAEA, he has no doubts that Iran wants to develop an atomic bomb. “The issue is not if Iran is making the bomb, but at which pace the bomb is being developed”.

Sztulman points out, however, that the Arab-Israeli conflict has nothing to do with this issue. “Iran is not Arab, but Persian. We have no common boundaries, we’ve never had conflicts. Israel was an ally of Iran, with daily flights and exchanges between the two countries,” he stated.

“Our problem is not with the people, but with the Iranian government, which wants hegemony in the region and tries to divert the attention from the country’s internal problems, thus becoming a menace to the entire world”

Spring Fundraiser 2012, Day Seven


This has been a good fundraiser. In between the circus from Norway and the stories of jihadists, of bankrolled mosques — the usual — readers have been sending feedback. And I’m going to get a tincture for my vertigo, which is better news than an MRI any day. As for the small stack of bills sent in the Anarchist magazine — someone has a fine sense of humor!

The subject of Diversity is fraught. So for this Fundraiser, I’ve deliberately kept the lid on certain subjects. They can accumulate like barnacles or smart bombs on the wall of diversity, or rather on the battlements of modern, top-down “Diversity”. As is true of any other project, some stuff has to be routinely scraped off so you can see what’s underneath, yet other junk — whilst appearing to be identical — will blow up in your face. Frankly, the explosions aren’t interesting anymore.

It is the former which draws my curiosity. .The latter, full of traps like the origins or even the existence of “global” “warming” — oops, climate change…oops, methane in the atmosphere. Whatever. Any point in “discussing” those issues is long past. Those in Charge will tell you ahead of time: “It’s settled…” “Consensus Has Been Reached”… “Everyone Knows”… “Only an Idiot Would Think Such a Thing”….and so on, ad infinitum, ad nauseam.

Have you noticed that the more fervently views on such issues are clung to (bitterly), the less room there is for Reason or even the possibility of entertaining alternate ideas? Entertaining ideas? Enter that realm at your own risk.

Here’s a partial list of Don’t-Go-There-Unless-You-Want-a-Fight hot buttons. No particular order here, simply a reflection of what I’ve been reading and thinking about. These are only contentions; I have no solutions. The mysteries of life usually don’t come with quick remedies:

• Abortion. Or not. When does life begin to have value? No, it’s not “settled”. Look up the numbers of those who believe religiously in #1 vs. those who think the prize is behind Door #2. Just don’t put these folks in the same room.

• Gender. What could be simpler: This is a girl; see that little cleft where her penis should be? This is a boy, see his penis hanging there? Gender-bending is occurring at younger and younger ages, much to the horrified sorrow of parents caught in a five year-old’s intense identity crisis. It may well be that the crisis is real enough, but it could turn out to be just one manifestation of a larger, more complex reality than the one we can see. Human beings are quite malleable, but they are also fragile. The times in which we live, where sexual identity is up for grabs — literally — are reflected in many issues, and one of them is seen in these canary children. In different times most of them would’ve been spared this assault from the zeitgeist, an assault which begins during the dark floaty existence in utero. Were there no assaults from the residues of psychotropic drugs left in the drinking water (just to name one possible influence), or the constant low-level cultural exposure to increasingly depraved pornography, these children could have lived within the boundaries of their respective anatomy without a blip. When times simplify again — and they surely will — outlier cases will recede again. That’s not much comfort now to these kids or their parents as they stumble through the nightmare.

• Religion is a crutch vs. Spirituality is a part of human experience. The former has become the more intellectually acceptable attitude of late, though one wonders what insecurity keeps the more aggressively devout unbelievers at their megaphones, proselytizing like hard-shell Mississippi Baptists. You begin to ask if there is some fervent need on their part to save the unwashed from arrant foolishness. Perhaps a good dose of American history about the cycles of the Great Awakenings in the 18th and 19th centuries would at least help the ardent atheists this side of the Atlantic to gain some perspective.

  My guess regarding the foundation of this popular orthodoxy among the media gatekeepers? It’s high school redux: they want to be with the cool kids and they don’t want to have to actually study anything. Aping your betters is so much easier, especially if your “educated” betters are being all edgy and you know it will irritate those boring duds in Flyover Country… As is the case for other media belief blankets, if you want to hear another side (and there is more than one) you’ll have to hunt for it on your own. What surprises me is the number of people who do — want to hear another point of view, I mean.

• Sex among adults. Interestingly, as the results from the Boomer generation become apparent, and the laws of unintended consequences begin to take their toll, their children are turning away from their parents’ youthful decisions to let it all hang out. They see the results and politely decline. Or at least the ones who catch on early enough do so. They know the health risks for both sexes of too many sexual partners. They understand the complexities of bonding better than their naïve parents did. Except for the one percent — those befuddled “Occupy” useful tools — for the most part middle-class kids have turned back the clock. Of course many of them face rigors their parents did not: huge education debt, a poor job market, and increasing balkanization by class. Their lives will be tougher in many ways, but then so will they. At least the ones who aren’t forced to move back home, much the same way their great grandparents had to do to get by.

• Sex with children as the new norm. Nope, that’s not worth our time. The downward deviancy of our culture was seen two generations ago and I’m sure it’s not hit bottom yet. But it will. In the meantime, let’s not contribute to the pollution.

• Death. Like the beginnings of life, its endings are becoming more fungible. The Right to Die vs. the Responsibility to Die. Our old are becoming the Ice Floe Generation. And who gets to decide whose life has meaning or value? Recently, a couple sued for Wrongful Birth when their child was born with congenital anomalies the parents believed they should have been told about ahead of time. Among the nettles were questions like financial responsibility for this life no one wants. This question lies floundering side-by-side with the reality of aborted, breathing fetuses who are killed on the operating table without a qualm. Are we confused or what?

• Trash. There are lots more thorns and contention here, but let’s end with garbage, with refuse, with detritus. Like global warming, there are folks on both sides of the Religion of Recycling, which is a smaller denomination of the colossal Environmental Cathedral — and that place makes Vatican City look like a high-rise tenement. Again, this subject has sectarian overtones in the higher reaches (or screeches) of the True Believers. For the dissidents there is often no choice: just because you can ‘prove’ your locality saves nothing by recycling doesn’t mean you can opt out. There are handy garbage technologies in your wheelie bin that will see you fined or put in jail if you don’t conform.

  One of the dystopian uncharms of living in an urban landscape is unending trash. But city-slicker trash has become another source of revenue for cash-poor rural areas. While the downside is that the nearby urban poor often find it cheaper to skulk out here to the country and leave their bags of unidentifiable refuse because they can’t afford the trash stickers the city makes them buy, there’s an upside to this. Big cities up North will pay good money to poor rural areas if they’ll take the garbage out. Thus many county boards of supervisors do just that, and this venture keeps the real estate tax rate down for the bumpkins.

  Don’t you wonder where this will lead as consumers are unable to continue consuming? Will trash reduce itself to an endangered species? In order to continue the justification of its existence, will the EPA have to step in with emergency rulings?

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Diverse contentions. They’re endless and they get more polarized all the time. As resources get thin on the ground, look for the rigidities to worsen. I don’t know about you, but I’m sick of living in interesting times. I’m ready for a good long spell of boredom — kind of like those endless amber waves of grain we don’t have anymore because they hybridized all the wheat. Modern varieties are now too short to wave at anyone.

A not-so-modern variety of donors came in yesterday from these places:

Stateside: California, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Ohio, and Pennsylvania

Near Abroad: Canada

Far Abroad: Australia, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and the UKT

hank you all very much for your suggestions and remedies for my latest malheur. I’ve already started on some of them. The Baron will check in sometime tomorrow with a recap, and then we’re done until next quarter. So much can happen in three months it doesn’t bear thinking about it too much. Obama will still be our president, though. Now there is a bone of contention for you; I’m glad I didn’t think of it till now.

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.

Queen Elizabeth II marked sixty years on the throne of Great Britain with a cruise on a barge at the center of a flotilla on the River Thames. Her Diamond Jubilee vessel was festooned with flowers and packed with notables. The weather for the occasion was rainy.

In other news, a passenger plane crashed on its landing approach to Lagos airport in Nigeria, doing enormous damage to a densely populated residential area near the airport. All 153 passengers on the plane were killed, plus an undetermined number of residents on the ground.

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

Thanks to C. Cantoni, Fjordman, Insubria, JD, Nilk, Steen, TV, 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.

Norwegian media boffins recently surveyed Scandinavian public opinion and discovered that people prefer to get their Internet news from sources other than MSM sites.

Horrors! We can’t have that, now, can we? Why — people might start questioning the consensus, and then where would we be?

Our Norwegian correspondent The Observer has translated an article about this disturbing trend. The translator includes this note:

This article fits in nicely with the ‘Radio Free Norway’ post that you published yesterday.

Professor Frank Aarebrot, who is mentioned in this article, testified in ‘Circus Breivik’ the other day. In his testimony he adamantly claimed that the fact that Norwegian journalists are mostly left-wing have absolutely no bearing whatsoever on the way news is presented in Norway. And it certainly, according to the good professor, doesn’t mean that the political left in Norway receives preferential treatment.

However, in this article he does express concern that the lamestream media in Scandinavia seem to be losing their grip on the news monopoly.

Also notice that the journalists themselves get their information mainly from… other journalists! They don’t go outside the consensus, either. Big surprise there!

Here’s the translated article from Nordiske Mediedager (Nordic Media Festival):

Journalists lose their grip on the net

Large sections of Scandinavian media users prefer websites that aren’t edited by journalists.

“Disturbing,” says Professor Frank Aarebrot.

Earlier in May, Professor Aarebrot presented the unique Scandinavian media survey conducted by Respons Analyse for the Nordic Media Festival (NMD).

According to the survey approximately a third of media users in Denmark, Sweden and Norway answered that they prefer “other websites” rather than those that are edited and published by the media when asked to clarify what type of websites best met their interests.

Skips journalism

“This means that they sidestep the journalistic link. It is a development that I find rather troublesome, and it is a development which I believe ought to be debated. We find that more or less confused people seek out internet forums and blogs which are not subjected to journalistic quality control and source verification in order to corroborate their world views,” says Professor Frank Aarebrot of the University of Bergen.

A similar survey of Scandinavian journalists shows that journalists still prefer traditional media controlled websites.

“I have to admit that I would feel more at ease if the conclusion had been that journalists were the most avid users of other websites. After all it is their job to seek out and estimate the quality of information, and this invariably means that they have to look for information on ‘amateur’ websites,” Professor Aarebrot says.

Least left wing in Norway

The media survey has been conducted since 1999 by the Nordic Media Festival. This year, for the first time, it was conducted in all three Scandinavian countries. Approximately 4000 journalists and members of the public were asked nearly 50 questions about media habits, media quality, relevance and trust in the media.

Professor Aarebrot could reveal big disparities between the Scandinavian nations, not just among the general population but also among journalists.

The traditional “journalists’ parliament” this time also included all the Scandinavian countries. The survey shows that journalists in all three Scandinavian nations are left-wing, but to a greater extent in Sweden and Denmark than in Norway.

In Norway SV (socialistic Left), AP (Labour) and Venstre (the Liberals) are heavily favoured by journalists. While in Sweden there is a strong overrepresentation of journalists who vote for Vänsterpartiet (The Left Party) and Miljøpartiet (The Green Party). In Denmark Radikale Venstre (the Radical Left), a traditional centre party which is a member of the red-green coalition government is the big winner among journalists.

The Scandinavian Media Survey is conducted by Respons Analyse A/S. The survey was carried out between February 16 and March 2, 2012. Approximately 600 journalists and 800 members of the public in each of the three Scandinavian countries participated in the survey.

Marine Le Pen, the leader of the National Front in France, has spoken out against the new Socialist government for its inability to address — or even admit the existence of — anti-white racism within the culturally enriched community in France.

Many thanks to our Spanish correspondent Hermes for translating this article from Alerta Digital:

Marine Le Pen asks for a law against anti-white racism
“Anti-white racism against the native French is causing havoc”

Last Wednesday, in a program organized by LPC, Le Monde, AFP and France Info, Marine Le Pen attacked the justice minister and asked for the establishment of a law against white racism.

The president of the French National Front said it was “astonishing” that the post of justice minister was given to Christiane Taubira, who described herself as an “independentist” and a “communitarist” (she criticises any kind of ethnocentrism or sociocentrism, any kind of self-concentrated group which implies a self-validation and a tendency to self-centrism). When asked to explain her statements, Marine Le Pen explained that the law known as “Taubira” was communitarist in its view of slavery as a crime against humanity because it deals only with he transatlantic slave trade, and it does not mention the Arab Muslim slavery.

“People live in fear,” she added, citing people who wrote her messages such as “I was systematically attacked because of being white, because I’m French, and they insult us with graffiti on walls.”

On the other hand, the president of the FN, legislative candidate in Pas-de-Calais, said that Christine Taubira “is absolutely incapable of fighting against the anti-white racism” and claims that the PS [Socialist Party] is also incapable of fighting against anti-white racism, because they simply deny it exists. And the UMP (Union pour un Mouvement Populaire) is incapable of fighting against the anti-French racism, which is causing havoc in the suburbs.

Marine Le Pen exposed some cases of anti-white racism in France: “Dirty white, white-faced… that’s what millions of natives hear every day,” she said.

“Go to the suburbs, walk for a while, come out of the TV studios,” she said to the journalists who were interviewing her.

Le Pen expressed her disappointment that her opponents “did not take the measures needed to fight this new kind of racism,” and she insisted on the need for a law “against anti-white racism”.

The article below describes the latest shenanigans pulled by the defense team in the Anders Behring Breivik trial. Many thanks to our Norwegian correspondent The Observer for the translation.

The translator includes this list of dramatis personae to help non-Norwegians cope with the unfamiliar names:

• Arne Tumyhr is the leader of SIAN (Stop Islamisation of Norway)
• Vidar Kleppe is the leader of Demokratene (Anti-Islamic political party)
• Ronny Alte is the former leader of NDL
• Lars Gule is of course a former wannabe terrorist arrested in Lebanon in 1977 with 500 grams of explosives in his luggage which he intended to use in a terrorist attack in Israel. I like to refer to Gule as ‘Dynamite Harry’, which is the name of a popular alcoholic character in a Norwegian comedy series from the 1970s. I think it’s a very fitting name for such a loser.

The translated article from Document.no:

Witness Chaos
By Hans Rustad

Defence attorney Geir Lippestad’s handling of the defence witnesses in the Breivik trial is scandalous. In order to have his client declared criminally sane, Lippestad wanted to prove to the court that there are many like minded individuals in Norway and that they could possibly even be morally responsible.

The complicity aspect has gradually waned as the trial has run its course and Breivik’s morbid personality has become more apparent.

But the question of like-mindedness wasn’t dropped, and it was reflected in the witness list, which roughly consisted of more or less politicised professionals, and representatives of the political opposition which covers a wide spectrum. It was with great reluctance that one was able to see one’s own name on this list next to individuals like Arne Tumyhr and Vidar Kleppe.

One definitely ran the risk of being caught between a rock and a hard place: between individuals such as Lars Gule, Mattias Gardell, Øyvind Strømmen, and Terje Emberland on the one side, and Tumhyr, Kleppe, and Ron Alte on the other.

It is as if one were to make members of SF [Socialist People’s Party — political party in 1970s Norway] responsible for the actions of RAF [Rote Armee Fraktion, Red Army Faction] terrorists if they had committed terrorist acts in Norway. Didn’t they share the same views?

When the media is unwilling to make any such distinction, the discomfort and risks become even greater. One was expected to go to court and incriminate oneself.

No obligation

Therefore it was a great surprise when Judge Ina Strømstad could reveal that privately summoned expert witnesses were under no legal obligation to testify.

Bruce Bawer and Ole Jørgen Anfindsen could therefore not legally be compelled to testify.

But what happened next was even more scandalous.

In the first lists that the Oslo District Court issued to witnesses subpoenaed by the defence team, they were listed as expert witnesses. Yesterday, day 29 of the trial, the defence team sent out a new revised list in which previous expert witnesses were now listed as ordinary witnesses.

Lippestad is changing the witness status in order to force people to witness, which is unheard of, and one is tempted to use the word “unethical” to describe his actions.

And especially after having listened to the testimony of Lars Gule on Friday. Gule was summoned to do a job: to compromise the moderate right, a job which he performed with great pleasure. If Lippestad seriously believes that people will take the stand for him after Gule’s performance in order to prove the existence of ‘like-mindedness’, he must be seriously deluded.

But there is reason to believe that some people will do so anyway.

The media bias and slander, the omission of information, form an echo chamber, if one may use the new terminology. The court also refers to witnesses as “right-wing extremists “. These accusations have become self-fulfilling, and this is serious in a case which deals with terror and mass murder.

Previous posts about the trial of Anders Behring Breivik:

2012		Apr		11		Circus Breivik
				14		The Show Begins
				16		Fjordman: The Breivik Trial Begins
				17		Trial Without Limits
				17		Cracking Down on Christian Terrorism
				18		Breivik in Brief
				19		Norwegian News Roundup
				20		The Best Laid Plans of Mice and Multiculturalists
				21		The Norwegian Straitjacket
				25		The Trial of Anders Behring Breivik: Week One
				27		Is Breivik’s Trial Unconstitutional?
		May		21		Opting Out of Circus Breivik
				22		Islamophobia ‘Experts’ to be Called in Breivik Case
				23		Narcissism Trumps Ideology
				29		The Left-Wing Media Filter
				31		A Witness Stands Down

Spring Fundraiser 2012, Day Six


So here we are at Day 6 already in our quarterly fund-raising effort. Just one more post from Dymphna, and one from me for the wrap-up, and then these annoying interruptions will be over until the dog days of summer.

We’ve seen a number of Widows’ Mites this bleg: a lot of people giving a modest amount each. Perhaps it’s a sign that times are lean. In any case, it’s gratifying that people are willing to stretch their budgets to help out.

Our theme this quarter is Diversity, as you probably already noticed. My tack has been to take a look at various kinds of diversity that I actually enjoy celebrating — as opposed to the orthodox diversity I’m supposed to celebrate, but which never leaves me in a very celebratory mood.

Tonight I’ll celebrate a topic close to my heart: the diversity of dialects and languages. For almost fifty years one of my main hobbies has been etymology and linguistics. Since I’m a Eurocentric white guy, the Indo-European languages remain my chosen specialty. Starting from the English language and tracking back through the history of words leads one through most of the languages of Europe, plus some in the Caucasus, Central Asia, and the Indian subcontinent. There are a few oddball tongues in Europe, such as Basque, Estonian, Hungarian, and Finnish — the last dubbed “Klingon” by Vlad — but the others are all cousins to English, and their family relationship to my native tongue is discernable to varying degrees.

When you start tracking down the origins of any given word, in most cases you will eventually find yourself back in Proto-Indo-European, the reconstructed hypothetical mother tongue of the entire family. The funny thing is that a lot of the diversity disappears at that point. Of necessity, many words are cognate with one another and derive from a common ancestor, since the size of the vocabulary of our steppe-dwelling ancestors was only a tiny fraction of ours.

For example, a huge constellation of words common to most Indo-European languages is derived from a single root in the ancestral tongue beginning with sta-. The sense of the original had something to do with having a fixed position and being permanent. Derivative words include stand, stay, stead, stop, staunch, state, stable, steady, stalwart, stanchion, staple, stable, and many others. So much diversity from a single source!

Then there’s the interesting topic of sound changes in English, such as the Great Vowel Shift, which is shown in the diagram at the top of this post. It took place from the 15th through the 17th century, and helps explain some of the perplexing inconsistencies of modern English spelling.

Consonantal shifts also follow certain patterns, with b, p, pf, f, v, and w being interchangeable under certain sets of rules across different languages and dialects. S, t, and d behave in a similar fashion.

There is a strange correspondence between s and h in certain languages. To an English-speaker the relationship makes no sense, yet one sees it frequently. Consider Greek roots such as hex (six), hept (seven), hyper (above), and hypo (below), and compare them with their Latin cousins sex, sept, super, and sub. In the Indian subcontinent we see the same phenomenon at work in Hindi (the language) and Sind (the province), which derive from the same place name.

For a fascinating series of cognates, look at various words meaning “water” (or compound words built from the same root). The list includes wet, water, wasser, vand, eau, agua, aqua, hydro, vodka, and whiskey, just to name a handful. All related, and yet so different.

So many other linguistic examples have stuffed themselves into my head over the decades. Stuff! There’s another sta- word…

I could go on, but bedtime looms.

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

Yesterday’s donors checked in from these linguistically diverse places:

Stateside: California, Florida, Minnesota, New York, N. Carolina, and Pennsylvania

Near Abroad: Canada

Far Abroad: Australia, Denmark, the Netherlands, Norway, and the UK

Thank you all very much. See you tomorrow — or rather, later today…

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 trial of former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak has finally concluded. Mr. Mubarak and his former interior minister Habib Adli were convicted and sentenced to life in prison. In Mr. Mubarak’s case, of course, that may not be a very long sentence.

In other news, former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi said that Italy should use its own mint to print euro banknotes to help ease the financial crisis. He also said that if France and Germany didn’t like his idea, they could quit the euro.

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

Thanks to C. Cantoni, DS, Fjordman, Insubria, JD, 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.

As reported in last night’s news feed, a man named Michael D. McCright, a.k.a. Mikhial Jihad, pled guilty in a Seattle courtroom to vehicular assault charges in order to avoid more serious terrorism-related charges.

The following news report is from last summer not long after the “road rage” incident occurred. The reporters delicately avoid using the I-word or the M-word, but it’s hard not to notice the perp’s chosen alias, “Jihad”, or his pal’s name, “Mujahidh”. If that’s not enough, there’s always the telltale zebiba on his forehead.

Many thanks to Vlad Tepes for uploading this video:

Below are excerpts from a related article about the guilty plea from Before It’s News:

Jihad in Seattle

Last week, Michael D. McCright, a.k.a. Mikhial Jihad, a previously convicted felon from the north Seattle suburb of Lynnwood, pled guilty to lesser charges in a case involving his attempt to force a government vehicle carrying two Marines off the road and cause a collision on an interstate highway in Seattle. The incident occurred on July 12, 2011 and resulted in McCright’s arrest in Seattle on Sept. 8. McCright is linked to another American jihadist who plotted a suicide attack against Marines.

According to the Seattle PI, the Marine staff sergeant in the car targeted by McCright told police that the suspect’s “eyes widened and he appeared to become angry” when he saw the uniformed men, and that shortly thereafter McCright deliberately swerved his car into the path of their vehicle, forcing it off the road, then stopped right in front of it.

Court documents filed following McCright’s arrest indicate he has links with at least one of two men accused of plotting a suicide attack on a south Seattle Marine processing and intake center. The deputy prosecutor in McCright’s case said that McCright’s cell phone was used three times to call Abu Khalid Abdul-Latif, a Des Moines, Wa., resident who is being held along with Walli Mujahidh, of Los Angeles; the calls from McCright’s phone were made prior to the July 22, 2011 arrests of Abdul-Latif and Mujahidh. The FBI decided to continue to investigate McCright’s possible links to domestic terrorism. And according to KING5 news, “[a] federal criminal justice source said the FBI had McCright on their radar even before the July 12 road rage incident.”…