Too Cowardly for The Conversation?

Part One

The case of the state of Florida v George Zimmerman will live in the annals of American history as a turning point in our centuries-long Conversation About Race, a discussion that has taken many twists and turns down through the generations. Remember when our current Attorney General came into office claiming it was a Conversation we were too cowardly to have? We didn’t know it at the time but that risible, rankly untruthful remark by Holder, made during Black History Month in 2009, was a warning shot fired across the bow of White People. Yes, we had been loaded onto our own separate ship, and our Attorney General was putting us on notice that the BGI (Black Grievance Industry) was now in the driver’s seat and we’d better make sure our lifeboats were in order.

But let’s go back a ways — back to the start of it all. Consider this:

Perhaps that Conversation itself was inherently flawed at our very beginnings? Is it the case that the long arms of karmic consequence reach down to us even now, to grab at our throats because of our Founders’ refusal to firmly confront the issue of slavery? Is that America’s Original Sin? Those men gathered in stifling back rooms in Philadelphia, hunkered down to hammer out something everyone could live with, had two ugly choices in the face of the exigencies of the situation.

The first “choice” would have been to refuse to give in to the Southern colonies on the issue of slavery and to demand surcease as the price for the South’s inclusion in this fledgling enterprise. The Northern and Mid-Atlantic delegates knew full well that the Southern colonies were adamant about keeping slavery legal. Thus, if the North pushed the issue, the grand dream of a federation free of King George’s heavy hand would die a-borning. Or rather, it would die on the battlefield itself, since they were already engaged in the conflict. Only unity could save the North and South from ruination and widespread executions of the rebel colonists.

The second choice, the path they took finally, was to appease the South and accept what they saw as an odious “institution”. Those men knew they were only kicking the can down the road to some future point when slavery would inflame and divide the country, but they thought it could be settled in a safer time and place, away from the pressures brought about by their Rebellion. Yes, they were certain that what they were bequeathing to future generations would carry a price, but I’ve often wondered this: if the Founders could have truly foreseen the consequences — the deaths of 650,000 men in horrific battles — would they have gone forward anyway?

Ruminating over the choices made by those signers of the Declaration of Independence is part of the Conversation that Eric Holder, with his Race-ist Filter permanently installed, can no longer hear nor see. Perhaps he never could.

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Nonetheless, the Conversation has continued down the generations since it first began. Its origins are coterminous with America’s own beginning. The talk has taken many twists and turns over the years, in large part driven by the engine of justice, however ill-defined that virtue may be. All of us are born with that sense of “rightness” hardwired into whatever it is that makes us human. That desire can be suppressed, denied, or otherwise twisted, but nothing can destroy it, not even death. Many tyrannies, both personal and corporate, have taught us this hard lesson repeatedly, but it never stops the power-hungry from their attempts to engineer the plebes into thinking differently.

It is inevitable that along with those who hunger for justice come those who hunger for power. This conundrum repeats itself in every generation, and sometimes we can’t separate the wheat from the chaff until long after even the gleaners have left the field.

The Civil War, with its 700,000 dead (no one really knows for sure) was supposed to have settled the argument. But the thoughtful among us never really believed a war would work, because weapons were, and remain always, the wrong tools for framing The Conversation. All that wars do is divide and conquer; feuds have a way of becoming eternal. One has only to study the history of the wider world to understand this phenomenon. If people perceive that Justice wasn’t served, then The Conversation goes underground, but it still continues. And the fiercest wars become the ones generated between those who are nearest, those in whom we can perceive just the slightest difference — and maybe the slightest, glancing blow of indifference. Grievances mount. Anger divides. The experience of scarcity accumulates.

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Tommy Robinson Gives Sharia Lessons in Birmingham

“This [Mohammed] is a man that we SHOULD criticize. This is a man we have the RIGHT to criticize.”

The English Defence League organized a demonstration in Birmingham this past Saturday. For once the EDL supporters outnumbered the police — there were several thousand demonstrators hemmed in by about a thousand police. Check out this video to get a feeling for the size of the crowd.

When Tommy Robinson addressed the gathering, he took the opportunity to explain some of the important elements of Islamic theology and legal doctrine. Tommy told the audience that he had read the entire Sira [biography of Mohammed] by Ibn Ishaq while he was in solitary confinement last winter, and he quoted from it to help his listeners gain a better understanding of the Koran, the Doctrine of Abrogation, and the life of Mohammed:

It’s an impressive talk, one of the most substantive and inspiring that I’ve ever heard him give.

Kevin Carroll’s speech is also well with listening to, and may be heard here.

Other speeches from the demonstration are available at the EDL website.

The Fire Jihad Comes to Nauru

Nauru is a remote island in Micronesia about 2,000 miles northeast of Australia, east of New Guinea. It is approximately three miles across, and with 10,000 native inhabitants, the second-smallest sovereign nations in the world.

Up until the 1980s Nauruans were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world, thanks to phosphate mining from millennia of guano deposits. When the phosphates were mined out and hard times hit the island, the government struck a deal with Australia to provide a refugee detention center in return for a generous subsidy. The center is one of several (others are on Christmas Island and Papua New Guinea) where the Australian government warehouses boat people until their asylum applications can be processed.

Australia has seen an explosion of illegal immigrants in recent years, especially under the more relaxed asylum policies of the Labor government. Would-be “New Australians” make their way to Indonesia, cram into overloaded boats after paying an extortionate price, and try to make their way to Christmas Island or mainland Australia. Here are the three most recent official press releases from the Hon. Jason Clare MP, the Minister for Home Affairs, Minister for Justice:

20 July 2013 — Border Protection Command assists vessel

HMAS Bathurst, operating under the coordination of the Australian Maritime Safety Authority’s Rescue Coordination Centre (RCC Australia), responded to a suspected irregular entry vessel north of Christmas Island this morning.

20 July 2013 — Australian Customs and Border Protection Service intercepts vessel

Western Australian Police vessel, Delphinus with Australian Customs and Border Protection Service officers on board intercepted a suspected irregular entry vessel north of Dampier yesterday.

21 July 2013 — $200,000 bounty on the head of local people smugglers

Minister for Home Affairs and Minister for Justice Jason Clare today announced that the Australian Federal Police will pay rewards of up to $200,000 for information leading to the arrest and conviction of people organising people smuggling ventures to Australia.

More than 2,600 “boat people” have arrived in Australia since the beginning of July. Numbers of that magnitude do not constitute asylum-seeking: this is an invasion.

While their asylum applications are being processed, the Australian government prefers to warehouse the invaders offshore if possible, including on Nauru. The massive increase in the number of arrivals necessitated a expansion of the Nauru center, and a $140 million renovation of the complex was recently completed.

That $140 million literally went up in smoke on Friday night, when detainees at the camp rioted and deliberately set fire to camp buildings, almost totally destroying them. The alleged issue was that their asylum applications were not being processed fast enough. As it stands now, unfortunately, many of them will never see the land of Oz. Some will end up in prison, while others will be relocated indefinitely elsewhere.

An Australian reader emailed us yesterday with a forward from a woman who works at the detention center on Nauru:

The last few days have been very stressful. When the detainees rioted last Friday night, workers were evacuated to the fly camp some 800m from the detention centre. I stayed behind, as did the command group who had to ensure all expats were safe. We exited the site shortly before 5.00 pm.

At about 8.00pm the detainees charged the security guards and the Nauruan police at the eastern end of the site . The guards and the police tried to hold their ground but were being pushed back.

While this was going on a group of Iranians syphoned petrol from cars in the car park, having breached the security fence. They filled some wheelbarrows with petrol and spread the petrol around inside their accommodation buildings and around administration buildings. Once lit the petrol soon got the buildings burning. At around 10.30 pm the whole site was alight.

While the fires were being lit the Nauruan police force called for volunteers. Fortunately, the locals responded and reinforced police and security guards who by about 11.30 contained the situation. I re-entered the camp at about 12.30am to see the last 7 months’ work burning before my eyes. I find it hard to put into words, even now, how I feel about the detainees.

We are currently constructing temporary accommodation for them as they are currently contained in an open yard or in the Nauruan jail. I am sure that these people should never be allowed to enter Australia — they are violent criminals posing as refugees.

That’s what it looks like to the people on the ground at Nauru.

Despite the dominant regime of political correctness, the tone taken by the Australian MSM is not very favorable towards the culturally enriched “refugee” arsonists. For example, consider this report from The Sydney Morning Herald:

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Norwegian Rape Victim Pardoned in Dubai

Marte Dalelv is a Norwegian woman who reported being raped in Dubai last March. Unfortunately, she lacked the four Muslim male witnesses required by Islamic law who could report that they saw the requisite joining of body parts without the victim’s consent. As a result she was sentenced to sixteen months in prison for having sex outside of marriage.

Happily for Ms. Dalelv, the worldwide furor that arose over her case has shamed the government of Dubai into pardoning her, and she is now free to return to Norway (where more sharia awaits her, alas, but that’s another story).

Notice that the Gulf News headline refers to the incident as the “Dubai sex case”, eliding any mention that an accusation of rape was involved. Then, in the article itself, the descriptions using the word “rape” say that she was “imprisoned for falsely reporting a rape”.

Also notice that after the first sentence, the article refers to the victim by her Christian name rather than her surname. Does that signify a deliberate lack of respect for her? Or are the Gulf journalists simply confused about which name is considered the formal one by Norwegians?

Norwegian woman in Dubai sex case is pardoned

Norwegian Marte Deborah Dalelv had been imprisoned for falsely reporting a rape, drinking and having consensual sex

Dubai: A Norwegian woman at the centre of a sex case in Dubai has been pardoned, her lawyer confirmed to Gulf News.

The lawyer of 24-year-old Marte Deborah Dalelv told Gulf News that he and his client went to the Dubai Public Prosecution office today, where they were informed that the Dubai government had granted her a pardon.

Mahmoud Azad Abu Gareda said Marte’s 33-year-old Sudanese boss, H.A., who was jailed for 13 months for consuming liquor and having consensual sex, had also been pardoned.

Following the pardon, Abu Gareda said Dalelv has dropped an earlier appeal against the primary verdict.

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Fictional and Dangerous Propaganda

The recent report about the Norwegian in Dubai woman who was convicted for “having sex outside of marriage” after reporting being raped has gained international attention. The fact that she was subsequently fired by her employer has served to add fuel to the outrage.

Fjordman has just posted a survey of material on “Sharia and Rape”, placing the incident in Dubai in its larger context of sexual predation by Muslims against non-Muslims, which is condoned by Islamic tradition and law.

Below is a report from the Canadian channel CTV featuring an apologist for Islam who earnestly endeavors to paint the “justice” system of Dubai as misunderstanding and misinterpreting Islam. Regular readers know, of course, that the decision in Dubai is in accord with every jot and tittle of Islamic law.

Vlad Tepes has augmented the news segment with some commentary of his own, drawing on the Koran and Reliance of the Traveller to make his points:

Here are the relevant sections excerpted by Vlad from ’Umdat al-salik wa ’uddat al-nasik, or The reliance of the traveller and tools of the worshipper, which is commonly referred to as Reliance of the Traveller when cited in English.

This an authoritative source on Sunni Islamic law, because it is certified as such by Al-Azhar University in Cairo. There is no higher authority on Sunni Islamic doctrine than Al-Azhar; it is the closest equivalent to the Vatican that can be found in Islam.

From Chapter O, “Justice”, Section 12.0”: The Penalty for Fornication or Sodomy”

o12.1:

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Gates of Vienna News Feed 7/21/2013

Syrian Kurds have consolidated their hold on a region of northeastern Syria close to the Turkish border. They demonstrated their military capabilities by capturing the leader of Al Qaeda in Syria. Turkey has warned the Kurds not to set up an autonomous Kurdish state in Syria, or else they may face “serious risks”.

In other news, a Swedish law professor has proposed that the government enact legislation prohibiting parents from drinking alcohol in the presence of their children.

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

Thanks to C. Cantoni, Fjordman, Insubria, JD, Jerry Gordon, 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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Sharia and Rape

If you appreciate this essay by Fjordman, please consider making a donation to him, using the button at the bottom of this post.

Sharia and Rape
by Fjordman

It caused headlines when the Norwegian woman Marte Dalelv (24) received a prison sentence of sixteen months in Dubai, United Arab Emirates (UAE), after reporting a rape. The interior designer was convicted of having illegal sex after she reported being raped. She appealed her jail sentence and has warned other Western women about the Islam-based legal system of the Emirates. The billionaire Wissam Al Mana, husband of the American pop star Janet Jackson, reportedly fired Dalelv from her job after she reported being raped.

The incident in question occurred in March 2013 and was first mentioned by Norwegian media on 17 July 2013. The story soon became international news, cited in major Chinese, French, German, Russian and other news outlets. As the newspaper USA Today explained, under United Arab Emirates law, sex outside of marriage is illegal. Rapists can only be convicted if either the perpetrator confesses or if four adult Muslim males witness the crime and testify. Researcher Anne Bang commented that similar, sharia-inspired laws exist in other Arab countries such as Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain and to some extent Oman.

In the UK, the Mail Online noted that Marte Dalelv is unfortunately not the only Western woman to have experienced such an ordeal in the Emirates. The Australian citizen Alicia Gali, another young white woman in her 20s, was thrown in a Dubai jail for eight months after she reported being drugged and gang-raped.

In Norway, Erna Solberg, the leader of the Conservative Party (Høyre), dubbed the treatment of this Norwegian rape victim “medieval,” and called upon Norwegian authorities to deal more forcefully with the matter. This is strange, given that she herself, while serving as a government Minister some years ago, suggested that Norway should establish an official sharia council with public approval, so that Muslims can follow sharia in family matters.

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“We Can Attack Christians…”

“…but we cannot attack a Muslim brother.”

That’s a very interesting admission by the culturally enriched mother interviewed in this news report.

As we reported last night, “youths” in the town of Trappes went on a rampage on Friday night. The violence continued last night, and also spread to other enriched areas in the glorious rainbow utopia that is Modern Multicultural France.

Many thanks to Bear for the translation, and to Vlad Tepes for subtitling this news video from French TV:

Transcript:

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The New Feudalism

Our Israeli correspondent MC describes the return of feudalism, after a long hiatus and in a new guise, to Western culture.

The New Feudalism
by MC

Most tyrannical societies seek to recreate a system similar to the feudalism that was widespread in Europe before the Black Death (1348 — 1350). This was a system of aristocrats and serfs, with a miniscule middleclass of master craftsmen, who served the nobility, but in turn were rigidly governed by the guild system.

Now, in our modern environment we tend not to have an aristocratic or religious nobility, but we do have political and corporate hierarchies. So as our democracies increasingly become politically meaningless, we are reverting to a modern form of feudalism where patronage is more important than acumen, and where one must conform in order to ‘progress’.

The educated middle class — those able to think for themselves — is gone, replaced by a generational mindset completely moulded by a box of electronic components and receiving data beamed from the centre, a centre controlled by a hierarchy. There is an electronic ‘carrot and stick’ process in which the stick will mercilessly batter non-conformism, and the carrot will reward those who parrot the status quo as defined by their betters.

The Black Death created a huge labour shortage in Europe, and so began the breakdown of the master-slave culture that was the defining ethos of feudalism. No longer were run-away serfs returned to their owners; they were hired and put to work as freemen to keep the aristocratic lifestyle from disintegrating entirely.

Slowly but surely the working man achieved a level of autonomy and freedom from the oppression of the aristocracy, culminating in the Constitution of the USA and the subsequent Bill of Rights which effectively removed the remnants of aristocratic dominance from the many societies for which it was a model.

In the twentieth century however, something went horribly wrong.

Europe spawned three deadly tyrannies: Communism, Fascism and Nazism. Communism had its roots in Germany; the trashing of the Judeo-Christian ethical foundation of society by the German ‘higher critics’ produced a free-for-all of moral relativity. Marx was able to take advantage of this new uncritical rigor to produce the political religion of Communism. Fascism, Mussolini style, grew from the melding of Marxist/Leninist doctrines with ancient Roman patrician supremacist culture. Hitler in turn blended Mussolini-style Fascism with ‘Progressive’ cultism (especially its race theory) from the USA to produce Nazism. These three tyrannical systems had more similarities than they had differences, and between them they changed the world — violently.

These tyrannies, and their offshoots, put the freedom clock back a thousand years, back to a time when Islam was a rising star performer.

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Al Raya Flies Over Grønland

The back flag that is flown by Al Qaeda and frequently waved by supporters of Anjem Choudary at demonstrations is al-raya, the black flag of jihad, or Islamic battle flag. The text on the flag is the shahada, the Islamic testimony of faith.

Now al-raya is flying over the culturally enriched neighborhood of Grønland in Oslo. It’s not illegal to fly the black flag of jihad in Norway, so all the police can do is to politely ask the householder to take it down.

Our Norwegian correspondent The Observer, who translated the article, includes this note:

I have translated this article from TV2.no about the black flag of jihad which was flying from the wall of a building in Grønland in Oslo on Saturday evening. I’m sure that the owner of the flag and his comrades dream of the day when it will by flying from the top of the Norwegian parliament building — which isn’t all that far away. Actually, the people inhabiting said building probably believe that it already does.

The translated article:

Flag of Jihad flying in the middle of Oslo: “Scared the crap out of me”

The black flag is associated with terror, death and destruction. Saturday evening it was flying over the town square in Grønland, Oslo.

A black flag with Arabic inscriptions, the war banner of the jihadists.

The incident caused fear and loathing, and at around 7 pm someone finally contacted the police. The flag was flying from a building that houses a Meny-butikk [Norwegian supermarket chain] right next to the town square in Grønland

TV2.no received confirmation at 8:30 pm that the police had been in contact with the person who hung the flag on the wall of the large apartment complex facing the town square.

“It is an Islamic flag. Some neighbors felt uncomfortable seeing the flag, so the person who put it there has taken it down, “ says Tor Grøttum, the manager of operation at the Oslo Police.

“It scared the crap out of me”

Neighbors told police on Saturday evening that they thought that an Al Qaeda flag was flying from the wall of an apartment complex which can clearly be seen from the middle of the town square in Grønland.

“It scared the crap out of me,” says a neighbor to TV2.no.

The neighbor, who is a Muslim, noticed the flag and recognized the inscription that read, “There is no God but Allah, and Muhammad is his messenger”

“I did some research and discovered that it was the same flag that Al-Qaeda uses,” says the neighbor, who wishes to remain anonymous.

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Gates of Vienna News Feed 7/20/2013

Robert Lady, the fugitive former CIA station chief in Milan, has been freed and is reportedly on a flight home to the United States. Mr. Lady was convicted in absentia by an Italian court and sentenced to nine years in prison for his role in the abduction of an Egyptian cleric in Italy. A few days ago the fugitive spook was picked up by Panamanian border authorities as he entered from Costa Rica, and handed over to Interpol for extradition to Italy. However, Panama was instead persuaded by unknown means to hand Mr. Lady over to the USA.

In other news, fighting continues in Syria near the border with Turkey between US-backed Syrian rebels and Kurdish fighters, who have established de facto control over the region.

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

Thanks to C. Cantoni, Fjordman, Insubria, JD, Jerry Gordon, Papa Whiskey, The Observer, 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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Erdogan’s Dilemma

JLH has translated an article about the Turkish uprising — which is no longer mentioned much in the media, but is still ongoing — from German-language site Infobrief Türkei.

The translator includes this brief note:

There hasn’t been a lot of news from the Taksim Square upset lately, so far as I know, but this commentary — which might be called “an anatomy of rebellion: — is only a week old, so it may still be of some interest,

Taksim Square, on the European side of the Bosphorus in Istanbul, was where the protests began, and is still their epicenter.

The translated article:

Erdogan’s Dilemma

July 13, 2013

A Commentary by Ismail Doga Kaatepe and Öyzgür Genc

There was a raid against environmentalists in Taksim Gezi Park on May 31, sparking nationwide protests in Turkey. Since then, Turkey has seen mass demonstrations across almost the entire country. On the day in question, an Occupy-like movement against the destruction of this relatively small park was suppressed. Hundreds of people were arrested or injured. Obviously, neither the commandant of the police nor the governor could have expected that this crackdown would mobilize hundreds of thousands of people across the country. This protest had already grown into a large rebellion by the night of May 31, apparently not only against the destruction of the park, but also — as indicated by the graffiti “Kahrolsun Bagzi Seyler” against “something.” As ever, it is not simple to coalesce the varying concerns of the protesters: the limitations of freedoms through actions of the government are their main concern.

What almost all the demonstrators have in common is dissatisfaction with the nearly 11-year rule of the Party for Justice and Development (AKP). A growing irritation with Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan and other prominent members of the AKP comes out during the protests. There is a striking range of variation among the protestors. The broad alliance of demonstrators consists, for one thing, of nationalistic-secular Kemalists — largely organized by the Republican Folk Party (CHP), of all the socialist parties and movements — large and small, and of those unions that identify themselves as progressive. For another thing, there are elements of the Kurdish movement, feminists, LBGT activists and many other individuals and organizations that are against “something.” At this time, the movement can be described as a broad coalition of “leftists”, or more exactly, as one that cannot be identified as rightist, Nonetheless, such a coalition has no common ideological basis; in fact, there are deep ideological differences or enmities, for instance, between Turkish nationalist Kemalists and Kurdish parties and organizations that are joining the demonstrations in the larger western cities.

The massive protests are perhaps the greatest challenge for the AKP since their victory in the parliamentary elections of 2002. Out of all the conceivable reactions to the demonstrations, the government and Prime Minister Erdogan seem to have decided upon repression — as do comparable governments in many states of the Middle East. Police and elements of the military were mobilized to suppress the demonstrations, along with pro-regime paramilitary forces. Thanks to the AKP’s ability to control the media, the MSM have been silent or given “pro-regime reports,” even though the protests against this practice were growing.

Since Erdogan is the most powerful figure in the party, his comments have been adopted quickly within the party and by his supporters. So the motto most widely current among the demonstrators has become “Tayyip, resign!”

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A Night Out for the Youths of Trappes

For two years France has had a law against public veiling of the face, and now the culture-enrichers of the Parisian banlieues have finally put it to the test.

In the suburb of Trappes, west of Paris, “youths” expressed themselves with some high-spirited mischief against private and public property, the police, and even a helicopter — all because the police dared to attempt to enforce the law against a fully veiled woman.

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

Below are excerpts from an article in The Washington Post about last night’s events in Trappes:

French Police Station Attacked Amid Tensions Over Ban on Muslim Face Veils

TRAPPES, France — About 250 people hurling projectiles clashed with police firing tear gas west of Paris, in apparent protest over enforcement of France’s ban on Islamic face veils. Five people were injured and six detained in the violence, authorities said Saturday.

The interior minister urged calm and dialogue, insisting on both the need for public order and respect for France’s Muslims. The incident in the town of Trappes on Friday night reflected sporadic tensions between police upholding France’s strict policies of secularism and those who accuse authorities of discriminating against France’s No. 2 religion.

A few garbage dumpsters in the area were torched and a bus shelter shattered in the Trappes unrest. Spent tear gas capsules lay on the road Saturday near the police station at the center of the violence.

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Fear and Loathing in the City of Westminster

I had to go away overnight on Thursday and for much of yesterday, and so missed an additional email from the Web Editor of Standpoint magazine. This message, which I didn’t read until late last night, exceeded the bounds of what I consider tolerable discourse, and I will forego any further correspondence with Standpoint. From my point of view, no useful function could be served by exchanging more emails with the Web Editor or anyone else at the magazine.

I have also discontinued my policy of redacting the Web Editor’s name from my posts, since it is, after all, a matter of public record, and features prominently at the magazine’s website. I had acceded to his request as a professional courtesy, from one colleague to another, and hoped for some sign of reciprocal good feeling. None was forthcoming, so Oliver Wiseman will simply have to accept that his name is now “associated” with a website he finds “repugnant and dangerous”.

Here’s the terse email that arrived from Mr. Wiseman on Thursday, but remained unread until late last night:

What good is removing my name if you simply link to my page on the Standpoint site? Please remove the link and my job title.

This was a bridge too far. I sent Mr. Wiseman the following reply:

Mr. Wiseman,

I apologize for the delayed reply. I was away overnight visiting family.

This absurd business has gone far enough. I will no longer jump through any of your hoops.

You are a public figure. Your photo, name, and email address are available at the Standpoint website. A publicly available webpage is exactly that — public.

I have nothing further to say to you. Any additional comment concerning our exchange of emails will be posted at Gates of Vienna.

I shall continue to link to your archive page whenever I find it convenient and useful to do so — as long as you choose to have it publicly posted on the Standpoint website.

Every attempt that I have made thus far to comply with your requests has been a matter of simple courtesy. But simple courtesy seems to be a one-way street in these exchanges between us, so my half of the correspondence is hereby terminated.

Cordially,

Ned

Despite the recent unpleasantness, my exchange with Standpoint has served a useful function, and provides ample food for thought. It highlights a core problem that exists among those who seek to halt the Islamization of the West.

Standpoint and Gates of Vienna are in basic agreement on the most important issue of our time, and agree on many other issues as well. Both organs should be part of an amicable coalition, together with all the other outlets that share the same general opinion about Islam. Yet no such coalition exists, and based on the evidence of the past few days, it cannot exist.

Why is this?

What consideration is so powerful that it overrides not only our common interests, but the very urge to survive?

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