Gates of Vienna News Feed 4/30/2013

The Netherlands celebrated the accession of a new monarch to the throne today with the crowning of Prince Willem-Alexander. The new king succeeded his mother, Queen Beatrix, after her abdication.

In other news, six “British” Islamic terrorists from Birmingham admitted to planning an attack with guns and explosives — which was thwarted accidentally by routine police stop — on an EDL demonstration. The accused are expected to receive lengthy prison sentences.

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

Thanks to C. Cantoni, Diana West, Fjordman, Insubria, JD, Jerry Gordon, JP, McR, Papa Whiskey, 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.

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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Radicalized for Jihad… In Canada

It used to be that earnest young Muslim men went on field trips to Yemen or Pakistan to be radicalized, but such is no longer the case. The Tunisian parents of Chiheb Esseghaier, one of the two mujahideen arrested for plotting to bomb the Via rail link, say their son was a good boy until he moved to Canada and became radicalized.

Many thanks to Bear for the translation, and to Vlad Tepes for subtitling this French-language news report:

Transcript:

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One Illegal Immigrant Every Fifteen Minutes

Hungary has become a magnet for illegal immigrants from the Third World, and is currently experiencing its own landlocked “Camp of the Saints” moment. Culture enrichers are currently pouring into Hungary from all over Africa and Asia, but they are simply using the country as a transshipment facility, en route from Serbia to Austria. Once inside Austria they will have access to the entire Schengen region — the fabled land of milk and honey for refugees throughout the Third World.

Hermes has translated three articles from Hungarian news sites about the most recent incursions of illegal immigrants. On one night earlier this month in the province of Csongrád, an illegal was apprehended on average every fifteen minutes.

The first article was published on April 26 by Index.hu:

112 illegal immigrants in just one night

Illegals were caught every quarter of an hour last Friday morning in the southern part of the province of Csongrád. The police detained 112 immigrants.

They had never before caught so many illegals in just one night. The work of the police was actively supported by the infrared camera network, as well as by the local guard and local citizens.

The illegals — the majority of them males — came from eight countries, the bulk of them from Pakistan. After being caught, almost all of them applied for refugee status. Since the beginning of this year more immigrants have been caught in the province of Csongrád that during the whole of last year.

Illegals trying to reach the Schengen zone from Serbia are frequently caught in Csongrád. The majority of them come from Afghanistan, but immigrants from Sudan, Burkina Faso, Nigeria, Senegal and Ivory Coast are usually also among them.

According to the statements by Afghans, it is rather easy to reach the Hungarian border, but the almost hermetically sealed outer border of the Schengen zone is almost impossible for them to cross. Dozens of refugees hope to find a secret forest path, but they become disappointed when facing reality.

The next article was posted on Sunday at Hirado.hu:

Police “fished out” a drowning immigrant in Mórahalom

Police and local guards caught 57 illegals in the last 24 hours in Csongrád. One of them had to be pulled out from a water channel by the agents, otherwise he would have drowned, according to a spokesperson from the provincial police headquarters on Sunday.

Szenti Szabolcs explained that late Saturday night they spotted with the help of infrared cameras five men walking on the Serbian side towards the Hungarian border. The agents went for them, and when the illegals crossed the border, they told them to stop.

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Secrets and Lies… And Threats of Reprisals

A number of employees of the State Department and the CIA say that they have information about the true story behind the debacle in Benghazi last September 11, but the Obama administration is threatening them with reprisals if they give sworn testimony to Congress — and denying them access to legal counsel.

Many thanks to Vlad Tepes for uploading this report from Fox News:

Gates of Vienna News Feed 4/29/2013

Denmark and Sweden are the most highly-taxed countries in Europe, with 48% and 45% of GDP going to their respective governments. Both have top tax rates of about 56%. Lithuania, Latvia, and Bulgaria have the lowest tax rates in Europe.

In other news, unidentified forces in Syria fired two ground-to-air missiles towards a Russian airliner carrying 159 passengers through Syrian airspace en route to Kazan.

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

Thanks to C. Cantoni, Fjordman, Insubria, JP, 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.

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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The Media Myths

The following newspaper article by Fjordman has been translated from the Norwegian, and includes an introduction (in English) by the author.

This essay was originally published online by the Oslo-based Aftenposten, Norway’s largest-circulation newspaper, on April 25, 2013.

The paper had come very, very close to libel-suit territory a few days earlier, when they published a big photo of me on the front page of the print edition, claiming that I am being funded by “right-wing extremists” in the USA. This was a reference to the fact that I had received a grant via the think tank The Middle East Forum, which I had stated quite publicly at Gates of Vienna.

I also told the newspaper openly when asked about this that I had received help with my legal bills (and only that) from the Middle East Forum’s Legal Project in relation to the Breivik case, following a kind offer from Daniel Pipes and competent aid from Ann Snyder and Sam Nunberg. All of this was already public and not a secret.

So Norway’s largest newspaper labeled the Middle East Forum as “right-wing extremists” on their front page. They quickly published an apology afterwards, however, possibly fearing a lawsuit from the MEF — and rightly so.

The same newspaper also published several long and negative articles in reference to a Norwegian biography of me that was published in April 2013 by the author Simen Sætre. One of my most notorious (and dishonest) critics, the professional Breivik-opportunist Øyvind Strømmen, published a “review” of this book in Aftenposten that was essentially one long hit piece against my person. After all of this, within a few days, I sent an email to Aftenposten’s political editor Harald Stanghelle, their debate editor Knut Olav Åmås as well as editor-in-chief Hilde Haugsgjerd and quite simply demanded that I be allowed to publish a full-length essay in their newspaper in response to this smear campaign.

The result is the essay below.

The media myths
by Fjordman

Translated by The Observer

In the last few days, dozens of articles about how irrelevant people like me supposedly are have been published in the newspapers. Those who work in the Norwegian mass media apparently lack a sense of irony.

In his review of Simen Sætre’s uneven biography about me, the writer Øyvind Strømmen describes my views on Islam as “strange,” despite the fact that opinion polls in many European countries show that large parts of the population are deeply skeptical of Islam. In France, more than 70 percent of those surveyed expressed doubts about Islam’s ability to adapt to their society. Similar figures may be found in the UK, Germany and the Netherlands.

There is so little substance to be found in Strømmen’s text that it is strange that he managed to get it published in Aftenposten at all. The only trick he has up his sleeve is to label certain individuals “fascists”. The fact that this is sufficient to secure him a nice career as a social commentator with virtually free access to the press says a lot about the social climate in Norway today.

It is also worth mentioning that the media have recently written about an ethnic Norwegian convert to Islam who sympathizes with the Jihadists of al-Qaida, and who may himself have undergone terrorist training in Yemen. Up until recently he was standing as a member of Miljøpartiet De Grønne (the Green Party of Norway). This is the same political party that Mr. Strømmen, Professor Thomas Hylland Eriksen, and Shoaib Sultan of the Islamic Council of Norway — now of the Anti-Racist Centre — represent. The terrorist might be a lone wolf, but he comes from Øyvind Strømmen’s flock.

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Gates of Vienna News Feed 4/28/2013

After two months Italy has finally formed a new government, headed by a compromise prime minister, Enrico Letta. A Congo-born doctor named Cecile Kyenge will become Minister for Integration, making her Italy’s first black cabinet minister. Two police officers were shot and wounded outside the swearing-in ceremony for Mr. Letta, apparently by a man who was upset and despairing over being unemployed.

In other news, the Taliban began their “spring offensive” in Afghanistan by detonating an IED in Ghazni Province, killing three policemen.

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

Thanks to C. Cantoni, Fjordman, Insubria, JD, Jerry Gordon, KGS, McR, Paul Green, Steen, TV, 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.

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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Cyberjihad in Spain

A Moroccan hacker group is waging cyberwarfare against Spain and other infidel nations. Many thanks to our Spanish correspondent Hermes for translating this report from yesterday’s El Confidencial Digital:

Moroccan hackers declare cyberwar on Spain: They have carried out 150 attacks already. They say: “We will be your nightmare, we will finish off your weak economy”

They call themselves “Moroccan ghosts”, and they have already attacked 150 webpages of Spanish enterprises, leaving messages on them in favor of the (Moroccan) Sahara and the king of Morocco, threats of “sinking” the Spanish economy and images of the Spanish flag in flames.

One of the messages they left on a website was: “Long live the Moroccan Sahara, may the Moroccan king live forever. You must know that we will not allow you to touch our home. We are here to defend our land, and the Sahara will be forever Moroccan. We will remain strong and united against anybody intending to harm our country.”

This group is beginning to be known throughout the world because of their massive attacks against webpages in the USA, South Africa, France and Israel, which are the countries most affected by their actions.

They attacked a large number of webpages in Spain this week. Among those affected are medical societies, business associations, foundations, airlines, foreign consulates and service networks.

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A Roundabout Way to Promote Free Speech

As reported here a few weeks ago, Mohammed the Roundabout Dog, the notorious creation of the Swedish artist Lars Vilks, has gone on a tour of Europe. Chris Knowles of the International Civil Liberties Alliance (ICLA) has written a report on the Modoggy Tour for Dispatch International.

A roundabout way to promote free speech

Plywood doggies inspired by Swedish artist Lars Vilks go on tour

by Chris Knowles

The Roundabout Dog Tour is inspired by the artwork of Swedish artist Lars Vilks. It intends to visit 60 European cities to highlight the importance of free speech. As in many campaigns before it, art is used to highlight the issues. Lars Vilks produced his Roundabout Dog series of drawings in response to the atmosphere of censorship that has enveloped Europe in recent years. He has been demonised, threatened and lost his livelihood because of the stand he took.

The drawings themselves are not on tour. Instead, the tour involves a plywood mock-up of the roundabout dog and it is this mock-up that visits the various cities. The plywood roundabout dog was created by a Swedish society called Free Speech Europe. It is non-political and promotes freedom of expression by supporting those who have been “blacklisted” or persecuted because of their political or artistic expressions.

The Tour emphasises the right of Westerners to follow Western values in Western countries. Sadly, there will be those who claim that the tour is a deliberate act of provocation. They will say nothing about the provocation from those who tried to censor Mr. Vilks by threatening his life. Censorship by threat of violence is not a Western ideal and the only way to stop such threats is to defy those who do the threatening. The tour represents this defiance, courage in spite of threats!

The doggies are on tour not to offend Muslims or Islam but to make a serious point of principle. Muhammed may be important to Muslims, but freedom of expression is important to Westerners. Restricting expression is a political act and if done in the name of religion then religion becomes a legitimate subject of political debate, satire and criticism.

If political debate is not possible then neither is democracy. Censorship and self-censorship represent a slippery slope to a non-democratic way of life. Everyone needs to understand this if society is to be a place worth living in. As such the tour is a mechanism to create understanding and to help ensure that communities are brought closer together.

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Free Speech vs. “Hate Speech” in Finland

KGS has a report at Tundra Tabloids about the latest public debate in Finland on the limits to free speech. As is so often the case nowadays, participants in the debate focused on the issue of whether speech “gives offense”.

As KGS says, “I’m offended every time a Leftist opens his/her mouth.”

Below are excerpts from his commentary and translation:

We have defamation laws on the books already, the guiding line is if the speech used is first of all, baseless or void of facts and with the intent to cause financial loss. We do not need faceless bureaucrats sitting in their cubicles surfing the net and deciding what others can or cannot say.

NOTE: Remember, we’re not talking about government organs inciting violence towards minorities, which has been the cause of brutal campaigns of victimization and genocide, but about the every day back and forth banter between individuals within society.

YLE: The subject of hate speech led to an active debate Friday, on the A-stream broadcast. The well known debater, immigration critic and founder of Hommaforum and editor in chief of The Finns party paper, Matias Turkkila, attributed hate speech to the frustration of the traditional public debate.

“People are afraid of what will happen. Many feel that their concerns and fears, for example, in terms of militant Islam not being taken into account. This causes frustration, and certain individuals have been affected by it,” said Turkkila.

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Atlas Shrugs Report: Landing Gear from 9/11 Plane Found

I shortened that title simply because I prefer short ones. However, the complete version is here.

Yep. I chose Pamela Geller’s version of the story, the one she published on the 25th.

I chose hers because it is the most heartfelt version, and because she has put so much time, energy and money into this pushback, and because her very being has gone into protecting Ground Zero from the Ummah. It is a visceral response.

I chose hers because paramount to her telling of the story is her identity as a New Yorker. Don’t get me wrong — New Yorkers are Americans through and through. But they’re a different breed of us: a faster gait, a rapid pulse, voices raised, words tumbling out of their mouths in their own characteristically quick-paced tempo. New Yorkers possess a hypertrophied sense of place, they live in the certainty that this is where everything worth knowing or doing or being begins.

Every New Yorker knows why the City was chosen as the first target of the Nineteen Creepy Bridegrooms: destroy our nerve center and the rest of the country would be a chicken with its head cut off. Washington? Strategically it must have been a secondary target; no doubt the B team terrorists were assigned to bring it down, but only after the Towers were infernos.

Pamela Geller has been a fearless fighter against the monstrous idea of a mosque intruding itself upon the hallowed space of Ground Zero in New York City. I have always believed the precise reason for their bullying intrusion into our grief was to remind us as graphically as possible that the horrific deaths of thousands of people on September 11th, 2001 is their doing. They are like mobsters having the gall to show up at the funeral of someone they contracted to have rubbed out.

Putting the mosque up was clearly standard operating procedures, taken right out of the Koranic manual of Jihad. Yes, we’ve learned more than we ever wanted to know about Islam in the intervening years since 9/11. One fundamental truth is this: once they have conquered a piece of territory they never ever give up. Even a cemetery with dead Muslims in it belongs to the Ummah.

That’s one of the reasons they take such offense at the name of our blog, though we didn’t realize it when we started out. All we knew was that it seemed fitting to remind our readers that once upon a time there had indeed been a miraculous victory for the West in its war against Islamic totalitarianism; this triumph stopped the further encroachment of Muslims for many centuries — at least until the suicidal mind-worm inched its way into the Western psyche, and suddenly Europe decided that importing thousands of Mohammed’s disciples into its sovereign nations was a capital idea. This notion has much in common with the West’s other suicidal venture, known cynically as “the war to end all wars” and subsequently dubbed “World War I”. Both “world wars” succeeded in killing off much of the best and brightest of European manhood — as can be attested to by most of the ‘leaders’ we’ve ‘elected’ ever since.

Our learning curve at Gates of Vienna has included a course you could call Islam Hates Any History That Makes It Look Bad. A corollary is that Truth itself is repugnant to Islam. Understanding this makes it easier to grasp why Islam is eager to twist history, and even more, why it is so eager to destroy historic artifacts. After all, if you keep the evidence of the past around for future generations to ponder, mightn’t they discover the Truth?

Islam flees from the Truth the way evil flees from the light. Western philosophy has always taught Truth as part of a triumvirate, Truth, Goodness and Beauty, and has applauded the search or creation of all of these as worthy endeavors. But none of them exist for Islam except as they may on occasion serve the interests of the Ummah. Thus in Mecca, beautiful or historic buildings are destroyed because they represent Idolatry. Or perhaps more to the point, they are historic, and Islam, upon close examination, is beginning to seem more and more to be a Gigantic Lie.

Look at poor Egypt. The grandeur of its past is long buried under the desert Islam made of its wheat fields as the conquerors destroyed the intricately engineered irrigation system which harnessed the Nile (see the greenhouses in Palestine for a modern version of the same phenomenon). Egypt’s grains — once upon a time — made it the granary of the Mediterranean. Its papyrus production allowed easy literacy. No more. Now Egypt’s superstitious, illiterate populace faces famine unless the West comes to the rescue. For sure their oil-rich Arab brothers won’t feed them. What is the profit in that? And now the new regime threatens to destroy yet another library, kill the artists and dancers, and — if they can — destroy the Pyramids. For this last crime alone they ought to be driven out of power, but the pusillanimous ‘leaders’ of the West will tell us they can’t interfere.

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

Now on to the tale of the newly discovered landing gear. You decide if Pamela Geller has the story right or if that esteemed British MSM outlet, The Daily Mail is more accurate [disclosure ahead of time : I’m with Atlas Shrugs on this one, whatever the particulars turn out to be — D]

Ms. Geller says: [please go to her site to access the many links in this post]

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Gates of Vienna News Feed 4/27/2013

In an historic moment, Geert Wilders of the PVV met with Front National leader Marine Le Pen for the first time. Mr. Wilders said that he and Ms. Le Pen see eye to eye on most issues, especially immigration, and predicted that there will be meetings with the leaders of other like-minded European parties who share his views on Islam and immigration.

In other news, 21 people were killed during violent confrontations between Uighur civilians and Chinese police in the predominantly Muslim province of Xinjiang.

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

Thanks to AC, C. Cantoni, Fjordman, JD, JP, Paul Green, 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.

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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Defeating MyArabia

During the recent sectarian violence in Burma, the media widely reported what was happening as the “ethnic cleansing of Rohingya Muslims by Buddhists”. Our Spanish correspondent Hermes presents a slightly different view of what is currently happening in Burma.

Defeating MyArabia
by Hermes

Last Sunday an article appeared at the online version of the German magazine “Spiegel” in which the author gave an account of the activities of a so-called “Buddhist neo-Nazi group” in the course of the recent unrest and clashes between Buddhists and Muslims which took place in Myanmar. As the well-informed reader may expect from the mainstream magazine of a land in which, according to the philosopher Peter Sloterdijk, “whoever is not a social democrat ends in a madhouse or in another land”, the article was all but unbiased in its efforts to describe the situation in this South Asian country, pinning the blame exclusively on Buddhists, and portraying Muslims as the defenseless victims in need of all sorts of help.

The author of this article went into discussing the activities of the Buddhist self-defence group 696, and cited the words of the so-called “human rights activist” Maung Zarni, who called this self-defence group “the most dangerous Buddhist neo-Nazi group in Burma”.

A Buddhist neo-Nazi group in Burma? “The most dangerous” one? How many “neo-Nazi” groups are there in Myanmar, then?

Well, now we have just learned that non-whites can also be called neo-Nazis and be depicted as the most despicable and evil racists on earth if they dare to fight back against Muslim savagery and jihad targeting, in the case we are now dealing with, Buddhists in Myanmar. The leader of this group, a monk named Wirathu, is immediately dubbed “Burma’s Hitler”.

Again, we have just learned that people fighting against Muslim domination and opposing global jihad can be called “Hitler” regardless of their skin color, ethnicity or religion. The only thing which really matters is the utter vilification of Counterjihad activists.

We have already seen many paranoid and bizarre examples of this long-standing leftist tradition of harassing, defaming and ridiculing free-speech activists in the most cowardly and barefaced ways. The blogger Fjordman has also been defamed in the same way as Wirathu with the usual spectacular idiocies which one can always expect to hear and/or watch from the sort of left-leaning people who have from the very beginning left aside common sense and sanity. What is still left to determine is the level of paranoid hate the Left can express towards anybody who has the guts to protect themselves and their culture against the Left’s most beloved “oppressed group”, a group which has been oppressing (and massacring, enslaving, raping, beheading, etc.) people from all ethnicities, religions, sexual orientations and classes for over 1,400 years.

The author goes on saying that “Even if president Ye Hut plays down the issue by saying that Wirathu and his followers are just a small radical minority among the 500,000 monks in the land, this does not mean that this extremist group is not dangerous. Their racist messages are successful.

Well, apart from the fact that, if we stick to the original meaning of the word “racist” and ponder its meaning, then any normal person with a healthy way of drawing logical conclusions will immediately realize that Muslims are not a race (any person from any race can convert to Islam), it is clear that as in many other cases regarding self-defence against jihad, the word “racist” is used to scare you and others away from:

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