Gates of Vienna News Feed 1/31/2013

The Roman Catholic Diocese of Worcester in Massachusetts withdrew an invitation for the renowned Islam-critic Robert Spencer to speak at a Catholic men’s conference. The diocese changed its mind after receiving complaints from local Muslims.

In other news, two more demonstrators died of their injuries today in a Cairo hospital, bringing the total number of deaths to 56 for Tuesday’s violent clashes in Tahrir Square.

To see the headlines and the articles, click “Continue reading” below.

Thanks to C. Cantoni, Fjordman, Insubria, JD, Jerry Gordon, JP, McR, 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.

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We Never Close

As most of you already know, early last week I was in the throes of reconstituting this blog in its present location after we were taken down by Blogger for “violating Google’s Terms of Service”. The move was not entirely unexpected — we’ve been anticipating it for several years, and especially since the Breivik massacre — but it was nevertheless a traumatic event. Even though we were fully backed up, to pack up and move an operation this size is a gargantuan headache. Setting up the new WordPress site, the migration of the archives, the adjustment of the template and settings to make the new site an obvious continuation of the old one — all of these were difficult and time-consuming tasks. We were fortunate to have the technical assistance of Henrik Ræder Clausen, who engineered the migration, easing my workload considerably. But the template was my job, so most of the rest has been up to me.

The site is mostly functional now. I’ve moved some of the old sidebar functionality to the top menu bar, where it may prove more useful, and can also include more content. Some of the old features that used to reside in posts — the Cultural Enrichment Archives, for example — have become pages, accessible through the top menu. In my spare time I’ll gradually add the rest of the authors, more of the “repression” cases, and additional topical material.

Early last week, while I was still working fourteen hours a day bringing this new operation up to speed, I was struck repeatedly with a feeling of déjà vu about the process. The job reminded me of something out of the distant past, but what was it? It kept niggling at me until finally, late last week, I remembered what it was. And now that the dust has (mostly) settled, I have a bit of spare time to tell the story.

Almost forty years ago, during my final semester at William and Mary, I had a roommate named Lloyd.

Lloyd and I were hippies, and engaged in the usual antics customary among college longhairs in those days — we drank beer, abused substances (at a modest level by today’s standards), played very loud music on the stereo, stayed up half the night, and slept late.

We lived on the third floor of Monroe Hall, which was an old, unmodified concrete and brick warehouse back then, before it was upgraded with air conditioning, card-key security, carpets, and all the modern accoutrements it has now. In the early ’70s it was one of the cheapest residences on campus, with only Old Dominion (known as “O.D.”, a nice word play for us hippies) being cheaper. The clientele at Monroe was thus of the rough and ready sort, and the roughest element lived up there on that hot, hellish third floor with us.

Lloyd and I would often come tramping up the big echoing stairwell with our friends in the middle of the night. Our raucous, drunken ascent — whooping and hollering and sometimes throwing things at each other — must have annoyed those students on the lower floors who lived close to the stairs and were trying to sleep.

I was a Math major, and minored in English, but my real passion was painting pictures. Over the course of the year I had painted murals in our room, decorated some of the furniture, and painted three panels on the outside of our door.

The first door panel realized one of Lloyd’s ideas, and was decorated according to his specifications. In hommage to our preferred lifestyle at the time, it featured a plate of bacon and eggs with a cup of hot coffee, painted in a retro 1930s style. To make it look like an advertisement, it bore a legend which read: “SPEED AND BRISCOE’S — We Never Close”. This motto referred to a truckers’ establishment just off the Ashland exit on I95 north of Richmond, and was familiar to all students who traveled back and forth to homes in Northern Virginia or Maryland. (I believe the Speed and Briscoe Truck Stop is gone now, replaced with the TA Truck Plaza, but I’m not certain.)

Next, on the panel below, I painted a depiction of the surface of a pool table, with three balls lying on the green felt. The numbers on the balls were laid out to form our room number — which I had painted over to make Speed and Briscoe’s — and supplemented with a big black eight ball off to one side.

The top panel eventually became a trompe l’œil view of the interior of our room as it appeared on the day we moved in, as though you could stand on tiptoe and peer through a window in the door.

We were justifiably proud of our decorated door. It told anyone who passed by what sort of fellows we were, and was familiar to friends and acquaintances who stopped in to see what was being imbibed or passed from hand to hand inside our infamous room.

One night near the end of the spring semester Lloyd and I must have been even louder and more obnoxious than usual coming up the stairwell at 3am. Someone on the second floor reached his personal breaking point, came up the stairs with a bottle of black Speedball ink, and threw the contents against our door. By the time we emerged into the hall to see what had happened, he was gone, leaving a black mess all over the painted panels and a puddle of ink on the floor.

Lloyd looked over at me and said, “You know what you’re going to do, don’t you?”

“No, what?”

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Disillusionment with “Europe”

The famed British novelist Frederick Forsyth has joined the growing chorus of Britons expressing their revulsion for “Europe” as represented by the EU, which they never desired to be a part of, and never voted to join.

Many thanks to Hermes for the translation from FOCUS Online:

Forsyth: The EU pseudo-parliament recalls the DDR

The British author Frederick Forsyth has joined Prime Minister David Cameron, who called for a referendum on the EU membership. Forsyth mercilessly lets loose about the EU in FOCUS.

“We want to be asked about the fate of our country. Yes, we insist on this,” Forsyth wrote in an article for FOCUS. It is not about an aversion towards Europe on the part of Britain, “because Europe is a continent we visit constantly, and we admire and are fond of its art, culture, music, literature, architecture, landscapes, cuisine and people,” Forsyth wrote. From this point of view, “the arguments about leaving Europe are utter nonsense.” But the EU is not Europe. Moreover, it is a project “about which we have become completely disillusioned in the last twenty years.”

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Kill Them and Grill Them

As World Net Daily reported a couple of days ago, according to scholars at Al-Azhar University, cannibalism is permitted by Islam under certain circumstances — the #1 circumstance being, of course, that the meal must contain no Muslims.

Here’s the clip from Arab TV, subtitled in English:

And the same clip (with minor corrections) subtitled in French. Many thanks to Marie Gervais for the translation, and to Vlad Tepes for the subtitling:

French transcript:

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Civilizational Jihad in Tennessee

Below are excerpts from the newsletter sent out today by the Tennessee Council for Political Justice.

In its ongoing mission to radicalize Muslims young and old in Tennessee, the Muslim Brotherhood Islamic Center of Nashville (ICN) led by Imam Mohamed Ahmed, is sponsoring an event at Vanderbilt University featuring two American converts to Islam (or as they prefer to call them, “reverts”), Zaid Shakir and Shaykh Hamza Yusuf, co-founders of Zaytuna College, an unaccredited Islamic postsecondary school in the U.S.

True to form, Shakir who says no Muslim can be a terrorist, is a popular speaker with U.S. Muslim Brotherhood organizations such as CAIR, ISNA and the Muslim Students Association. He professes to the same end goal of the Muslim Brotherhood — to see the “day in which America is a Muslim country ruled by Islamic law.” [pdf] And consistent with the Muslim Brotherhood’s plan as laid out in its 1991 Explanatory Memorandum, he sees organizing Muslims in this country as the way to accomplish this objective.

He understands the political leverage gained by remaining separate and apart from American society by claiming a religious-based moral superiority. He reinforces this by asserting [pdf] that “American society ‘is sinful and constitutes open rebellion against Allah.’“

Cut through the veneer of Shakir’s co-presenter Shaykh Hamza Yusuf, and it’s the same Muslim Brotherhood endgame — “slaves to Allah” [pdf] will cure the ills of America because as they know, slavery to “Islam is the solution.” His 1996 speech to the sharia-for-America Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA — see Newsletter #41) makes his true agenda perfectly clear:

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“Deep Down, Muslims Feel That They Have Failed”

In the following interview from Der Spiegel, a Pakistani nuclear physicist gives a lucid account of the state of Islam in the 21st century. Notice that the interviewer is actually more Islam-friendly than his Muslim interlocutor.

Many thanks to Hermes for the translation:

Pakistani nuclear physicist: “Islamic Societies Have Collectively Failed”

There is a growing unrest in Islamic lands, and religious forces are gaining ground after the Arab revolution. The Pakistani nuclear physicist Pervez Hoodbhoy sees a “collective failure” of Muslim societies. He clarified his thesis during an interview with SPIEGEL ONLINE.

Students frolic around Pervez Hoodbhoy. They wear tunics and doctoral caps. The young women have simply put the caps on their headscarves. They have just learned that they have passed the examinations. Now they want to take a group photo of themselves with Hoodbhoy, their famous teacher.

Pervez Hoodbhoy, 62, is a nuclear physicist at Quaid-e-Azam University in Islamabad, the capital of Pakistan. He has been teaching here since the ‘70s. He has studied and taught at renowned universities in USA and Europe. He has received awards for his scientific activities, and he has engaged in political issues through physics.

For example, he criticized the nuclear upgrading of Pakistan, which is a nuclear power, and the advance of religion in scientific, cultural and political sectors. With this attitude he has earned himself enemies in Pakistan, a country which is very proud of having an atomic bomb. A private university in Lahore has already fired him, and he has been waiting for months to collect his salary for his work in Islamabad.

Despite this, he says he has never thought of leaving Pakistan. Hoodbhoy was born Muslim, in an Ishmaelite family. He is hated by many, but secretly admired by others, and he does not want to be silenced. “I say what I think. And I provide a solid basis for it,” he says in his office, which he still has in the university where he has yet to receive his salary. Pictures of Japan in the aftermath of the dropping of the atomic bomb hang on the walls, and books on physics and politics are piled upon his desk.

Read in the interview why Pervez Hoodbhoy takes such a critical stance towards religion, and what he sees for the future of Islamic societies:

Spiegel:  Mr. Hoodbhoy, you regularly warn about the radicalization of Muslims. How exactly do you come to this position?
Hoodbhoy:  When I started teaching here at Quaid-e-Azam University in Islamabad in the early ‘70s, there was only a single student in the entire campus wearing a burka. Today around 70 per cent of the women here are fully covered. Only 30 per cent go around normally.
Spiegel:  Do your students justify it? Or is that not an issue?
Hoodbhoy:  I ask them occasionally, and many of them say Islam requires it of them. Others say they wear a burka or hijab because most women here do. Others say they feel safer like that, because when they’re standing at the bus stop no one bothers them.
Spiegel:  So there’s no turning back to God or stricter interpretation of religion?
Hoodbhoy:  Yes there is. We are experiencing a huge cultural revolution in the Islamic world, not just in Pakistan, but in more or less every Islamic country. Pakistan is changing, Afghanistan has radicalized, Iran, Iraq, many countries in Africa and the Arabian world, Egypt, Algeria, now Mali. Sooner or later in Syria only veiled women will be seen. But let’s look at the Islamic communities in Europe or the USA — they are infected with the same virus. Why? I think people are noticing that they differ from others. A burka is essentially just a label to distance yourself from others. It says clearly: my identity is Islamic. This identity is closely linked to the feeling of being a victim of history. Deep down, Muslims feel that they have failed. This mix of sensitivities makes me afraid, because it leads to behavior that is very unhealthy.
Spiegel:  You view Muslim societies as having collectively failed. What do you mean by that?
Hoodbhoy:  There are around 1.5 billion Muslims in the entire world — but they cannot point to a substantial achievement in any field. Not in politics, not socially, not in the sciences or art or literature. The only thing they do with great devotion is fast and pray. But there are no efforts to improve conditions of life in Islamic societies. Unconsciously, people naturally feel this is a collective failure.
Spiegel:  Last time there was the so-called Arab Spring, where people — Muslims — fought for better living conditions.

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Gates of Vienna News Feed 1/30/2013

The American economy unexpectedly contracted during the fourth quarter of 2012, with economic output falling at an annual rate of -0.1%. Experts say a decline in exports coupled with reduced military spending contributed to the contraction.

In other news, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair was given an award in Poland for helping to open Britain up to Polish immigration. Thanks to Mr. Blair’s efforts, more than half a million native Poles are currently residents of the UK.

To see the headlines and the articles, click “Continue reading” below.

Thanks to C. Cantoni, Erick Stakelbeck, Fjordman, Insubria, JD, Jerry Gordon, JP, Lurker from Tulsa, McR, Nick, Seneca III, Steen, 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.

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Hezbollah in Yucatán

As mentioned here many times in the past, the southern border of the United States is porous not just to Mexicans, Salvadorans, and Guatemalans, but also to Islamic terrorists. Operatives from Al Qaeda and Hezbollah acquire a Latin American passport and enough Spanish to allow their swarthiness to pass as Latino.

This latest report concerns the arrival of a Hezbollah associate in Mexico. Many thanks to Iz-M (via Vlad) for the translation from Diario de Yucatán:

More signs of the presence of Hezbollah

Labboun Rafic Mohammed, the Muslim cleric allegedly linked to Hezbollah and a fugitive from U.S. justice who was arrested in Merida on September 8, 2012, arrived at Yucatán immigration through a network of Lebanese government officials in collusion with Belizeans who gave him a fake passport from that country.

As we reported at the time, upon his arrest by officers of the Public Security Secretariat Yucatecan government, Labboun exhibited a Belizean passport in the name of Wilhelm Dyck, a Mennonite child born in that country in February 1976 who died two months later. A driver’s license was issued in the same name.

Yesterday we reported that Razur Antonio Elias, the director of the Mexican Drug Observatory investigating Islamist organizations associated with Mexican drug traffickers and their possible ramifications in the Yucatán Peninsula, said that this group of people offered Belizean passports for $ 25,000, with a birth certificate and fake driver’s license.

In addition to these documents, the group organizes the transfer of these people with forged documents through Mexican territory to the U.S. border, where the city of Merida, it seems, is key to the logistics.

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Babel on the Spree

In some districts of Berlin, German is no longer the first language of most schoolchildren. In many cases it isn’t even their second language, and sometimes they don’t speak it at all.

Many thanks to Hermes for translating this article from Sunday’s B.Z.:

81,270 children in Berlin speak German badly

The number of kids having problems with the German language is especially high in Moabit, Wedding, Kreuzberg and Neukölln

More and more kids in Berlin are going to school without knowledge of the German language, because no one speaks German at home. This is revealed by a survey about pre-school education conducted by the Federal State’s statistical office. According to the survey, there are 34,254 families in Berlin with pre-school children in which nobody speaks German, that is, a quarter of all families. This adds up to 81,270 children under six years old.

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Bringing the Jihad Home from Mali to Europe

The following article, published yesterday in Bild, describes the danger of terror attacks from “Germans” who return home from Mali to wage jihad against their adopted country in revenge for Western intervention in Africa.

Many thanks to Oz-Rita for the translation:

Because of War in Mali: New Terror Danger in Germany

By F. Solms-Laubach

Berlin – Fighter jets thunder over Timbuktu (North Mali, 50,000 inhabitants). French special forces have chased Islamist terrorists from the town. Thus, the takeover of Mali by Al Qaeda Islamists has been stopped for the time being.

But as a consequence, the danger of terrorism in Europe, in Germany is growing.

In 2012 alone, according to BILD reports, there were about 50 persons from the Islamist-terrorist milieu (scene) in Germany who have travelled to terror-camps worldwide. There they were schooled by members of the terror network Al Qaeda: in close combat techniques, in small arms as well as in the making of bombs. This is revealed in secret documents of the German security services. (BILD is in possession of these papers.)

Assignment for the terrorists: to form “autonomous terror cells” in Germany and then attack prominent targets.

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Gates of Vienna News Feed 1/29/2013

Posting has been light today because I spent most of it working on a paying programming job. I also had to clean out the rain gutters this afternoon, an odious task, and managed to get a splinter under the side of one of my fingernails while I was doing it — but y’all don’t want to hear about that…

Today the Senate confirmed the appointment of John Kerry as United States Secretary of State by a vote of 94 to 3. Meanwhile, an American F-16 fighter jet was lost over the Adriatic Sea, and an intensive search is underway for the missing pilot.

In other news, France says that it will begin deporting radical Salafist imams during the next few days. Also, Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad’s wife is pregnant.

To see the headlines and the articles, click “Continue reading” below.

Thanks to C. Cantoni, Fjordman, Insubria, JD, JP, McR, Steen, 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.

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Retired Warriors Speak Out Against Hagel

Former Senator Chuck Hagel (D-Nebraska) is a good ideological fit for President Obama, so it’s no surprise that his nomination as Secretary of Defense has raised the hackles of retired leaders of the United States military. It’s a good bet that many serving generals and admirals have similar sentiments about Mr. Hagel, but obviously there is no way to tell.

Now fourteen retired military officers have come out publicly against the appointment of Mr. Hagel in a letter to the Senate Armed Services Committee. Below are excerpts from the press release on the topic that was sent out this morning by the Center for Security Policy :

Military Leaders Oppose Confirmation of Sen. Chuck Hagel for Secretary of Defense

(Washington, D.C.): A distinguished group of fourteen retired generals and admirals, representing all branches of the United States Armed Forces, has signed a letter opposing the nomination of Sen. Chuck Hagel for Secretary of Defense.

The letter — addressed to Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI) and Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK), respectively, the Chairman and Ranking Member of the Senate Armed Services Committee — raises several concerns about the nomination of Sen. Hagel, including:

Sen. Hagel’s support for further cuts to the defense budget. Sen. Hagel stated in late August 2011 that the Pentagon is “bloated” and needs to be “pared down”, contrary to Sec. Panetta’s and Chairman Dempsey’s views that sequestration — the additional hundreds of billions in across-the-board cuts to defense that go well beyond the $787 billion in cuts already sustained by the Department since Sec. Gates’ tenure — would be “disastrous for the defense budget” and “very high risk” to national security;

Sen. Hagel’s support for the global elimination of nuclear weapons. Sen. Hagel is a public supporter of the “Global Zero” Initiative, the goal of which is the “elimination of all nuclear weapons.” This stance is ill-advised for any Secretary of Defense, as Russia and China continue to modernize their nuclear capabilities while North Korea and Iran move closer to obtaining them.

Sen. Hagel’s hostility towards Israel. Sen. Hagel has demonstrated an abiding hostility towards Israel, a view that would be detrimental to our national defense and perhaps perilous to our only stable, reliable ally in the Middle East were he to become Secretary.

Sen. Hagel’s outlook towards Iran. Sen. Hagel repeatedly opposed sanctions against Iran while serving in the Senate, and in 2006 stated that “a military strike against Iran, a military option, is not a viable, feasible, responsible option” — an ill-advised statement that undercuts the effectiveness of both diplomatic and military policies to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons capabilities.

The signers of the letter are:

  • Adm. James “Ace” Lyons, USN (Ret.)
  • Lt. Gen. William G. “Jerry” Boykin, USA (Ret.)
  • Vice Adm. Robert Monroe, USN (Ret.)
  • Lt. Gen. E.G. “Buck” Shuler, Jr., USAF (Ret.)
  • Maj. Gen. Thomas F. Cole, USA (Ret.)
  • Maj. Gen. Vincent E. Falter, USA (Ret.)
  • Rear Adm. H.E. Gerhard, USN (Ret.)
  • Rear Adm. Robert H. Gormley, USN (Ret.)
  • Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Higginbotham, USMC (Ret.)
  • Rear Adm. Don G. Primeau, USN (Ret.)
  • Maj. Gen. Mel Thrash, USA (Ret.)
  • Maj. Gen. Paul E. Vallely, USA (Ret.)
  • Brig. Gen. William A. Bloomer, USMC (Ret.)
  • Brig. Gen. Ronald K. Kerwood, USA (Ret.)

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr., President and CEO of the Center for Security Policy, which facilitated this letter, stated: “These military leaders deserve our profound thanks for once again acting in service to our nation — in this instance, for the purpose of raising awareness of the risks associated with confirming Sen. Chuck Hagel to be Secretary of Defense. This group knows firsthand that the United States military requires leadership that recognizes the need for a defense budget commensurate with the threats we face; the need for a credible, reliable and effective nuclear deterrent; and the need to support our allies and not accommodate our adversaries. Sen. Hagel lacks these qualities, and hopefully the United States Senate will heed the concerns of these flag and general officers during the course of his confirmation process.”

[…]

The full text of the letter can be found below:

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Gates of Vienna News Feed 1/28/2013

Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands has announced that she will abdicate the throne in favor of her son, Crown Prince Willem-Alexander, on April 30. The queen says she is relinquishing the throne due to her age. The decision had been long expected.

In other news, a professor at Australian National University is proposing that his country adopt a new flag, one that is more culturally and politically inclusive.

In other news, the Islamic Republic of Iran announced that it launched a monkey into Earth orbit. There’s no word on whether the simian astronaut is of Jewish heritage.

To see the headlines and the articles, click “Continue reading” below.

Thanks to C. Cantoni, CSP, Fjordman, Insubria, JD, Jerry Gordon, 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.

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