Monthly Archives: September 2013

Islamization and the 2013 Elections in Norway

Posted on by

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

Islamization and the 2013 Elections in Norway
by Fjordman

The left-wing coalition of PM Jens Stoltenberg has conceded defeat in the September 2013 elections in Norway. The likely new Prime Minister will be Erna Solberg of the Conservative Party (Høyre), who is unfortunately still a devout Multiculturalist. She is currently engaged in talks with three other center-right parties (by local standards) who together hold the majority in the new Parliament. One of these is the country’s third largest party, the right-wing Progress Party (Fremskrittspartiet). For the first time ever, they now look set to become a part of a coalition government or at least have some type of formalized cooperation with the new government.

The prospect that this party might have some influence over the country’s immigration policies has caused panicked reactions among members of the heavily left-leaning press. However, the Progress Party in Norway is softer than the Danish People’s Party in Denmark or the Sweden Democrats in Sweden. It stubbornly refuses to associate with either of these perfectly legitimate parties in public. This is a cowardly decision.

The problem with the Progress Party in recent years is that they have tried to appease and placate the hostile mass media. A better option would be to simply accept that the media will always be hostile to everybody who is critical of mass immigration. Accepting this makes it easier to go on the offensive. Trying to placate hostile journalists only makes one look weak.

This problem has grown worse after the big national trauma in Norway: Anders Behring Breivik’s massacre of 77 people on July 22, 2011. Breivik was for a limited time an unimportant local member of a Progress Party chapter in one part of Oslo, but he left because he could not find room for a career there. He openly stated in his so-called manifesto that he suspected that his brief association with this party would create problems for them after his terror attacks. He seemed to derive satisfaction from this thought, and further stated during the trial that he wanted to trigger a “witch-hunt” on non-violent groups on the political Right.

The mass media have given him pretty much what he wanted in this regard. The unfair attacks by the press and the political establishment on the Progress Party for somehow preparing the grounds for Breivik’s massacre were initially quite strong, and continue to some extent to this day. Breivik has become a very convenient tool for smearing critics of Islam and mass immigration.

On September 10 2013, immediately after the elections, the British newspaper The Independent ran the following headline: “Norway election results: Anti-immigrant party with links to mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik set to enter government under Conservative leader Erna Solberg.” Corriere della Sera, one of Italy’s major newspapers, labeled them the “Breivik party.” The Progress Party argued that such labels are unfair and might damage Norway’s reputation abroad. They called for a press conference to dispel such accusations.

The outgoing Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg of the Labour Party challenged Siv Jensen, the leader of the Progress Party, to publicly apologize for using the term “sneak-Islamization.” She refused, but Ketil Solvik-Olsen, the party’s deputy leader, earlier told a meeting with foreign journalists that Jensen’s claim that Norway faced the threat of “sneak-Islamization” had been unfortunate. He apologized for this.

Siv Jensen had previously used the term “snikislamisering,” which might be translated as “stealth-Islamization,” “sneak-Islamization” or “creeping Islamization.” Of course, in real life this term is now inadequate. What we are seeing in parts of Western Europe today is no longer stealth-Islamization; it’s open, galloping Islamization.

Continue reading →

From All Of Us To All Of You

Posted on by

It’s time to speak up! It’s time to talk about that Sweden where everyone has equal value, regardless of race, gender, disability, religion or sexual orientation. The Sweden we believe in. The Sweden we love.

“Sweden is big enough for all of us.”

For regular readers (especially those in Scandinavia) it’s no surprise that Sweden is in the midst of yet another public initiative to stamp out hate and discrimination based on race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, number of body parts, species, and planet of origin.

OK, I admit I made up the last two. But still…

A group of Swedish celebrities and public figures has issued a manifesto called “A Sweden for all of us”, and has called upon others to join up and show their solidarity for “the Sweden we believe in”. Given that Sweden is just as much a jantelagen society as Denmark or Norway, the push to become part of the consensus is all but irresistible. More and more of the glitterati have signed their names to this universal invitation.

It’s no coincidence that this appeal emerged concurrently with the official proclamation that Sweden welcomes all Syrian refugees and their families. This is a blatant attempt to ensure that no respectable person dare voice his disagreement with the new policy. And it’s obviously a thinly-veiled attack on the immigration-critical Sweden Democrats, whose position in the latest polls is running at about 10%.

Many thanks to our Swedish correspondent LN for translating this piece from Aftonbladet. From the sidebar:

DEBATE:

Xenophobia that penetrates into our daily conversation will no longer be met with silence — support a Sweden for us all, write Jan Scherman, Ingela Edlund, Katrin Ludvigsson, Navid Modiri and Anna Ryott, along with several hundred known and unknown Swedes. Manifesto published today in Aftonbladet and Expressen. So support the initiative “A Sweden for all of us”: the writing on ossalla.nu. Here’s the campaign on Twitter.

From the article:

A dangerous xenophobic wind blows over Sweden. It forces its way into our everyday conversations. It’s loud in public debate. But silence is no answer. Today is the beginning of our call for the Sweden we want to live in.

Now we raise our voices for a Sweden for all of us. The country we believe in, and the tolerance and diversity that best of all can handle present and future challenges.

We are 489 signatories today. We become more all the time. The petition and a range of other activities start today and will continue. For weeks, for months and years if necessary.

Do as we do — write on a Sweden for all of us!

Continue reading →

Gates of Vienna News Feed 9/17/2013

Posted on by

The Italian luxury liner Costa Concordia is finally being righted and raised, a year and a half after it ran aground off a Tuscan island. The hulk is being salvaged by an American-Italian consortium, which plans to tow it to a shipyard and break it up for scrap.

In other Italian maritime news, nearly a thousand illegal migrants traveling in five different boats were rescued overnight in the Channel of Sicily by the Italian navy and coast guard. The refugees are reportedly Syrians, Palestinians, and Moroccans.

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

Thanks to C. Cantoni, Fjordman, Insubria, JD, Jolie Rouge, JP, KP, 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.

Continue reading →

Dutch Attack!

Posted on by

Earlier this month a young man in the Dutch city of Assen ended up in the hospital after being beaten up for no apparent reason by a gang of Moroccan “youths”, while police looked on and did nothing. The victim’s father is angry about official indifference, and has formed a group made up of like-minded citizens who vow to administer vigilante justice if the police continue their inaction in the face of culturally enriched violence.

Many thanks to El Rubio for translating this article from Dagblad van het Noorden:

Police in Assen under fire after violent nightlife incident

ASSEN [the capital of a north-eastern province in the Netherlands] — The police in Assen are in the limelight because their officers did not interfere during the occurrence of a seriously violent nightlife incident, in spite of standing almost right on top of it.

Last Sunday morning, the 22-year old Erwin Visser from Rolde was — for no apparent reason — attacked by a gang of about twenty youths of Moroccan descent who beat him without mercy. According to the father of the victim, Koos Visser, nobody from the watching police or nightclub security interfered.

This “hands-off” approach, according to a 21-year-old woman from Assen, was completely unacceptable. She reported to this newspaper [Dagblad van het Noorden www.dvhn.nl], because the previous week two of her girlfriends were harassed in the same locale by a gang of Moroccan youths. “I made the police aware of this. Suddenly I was thrown to the ground by six policemen and dragged into a police car. I admit that I reacted somewhat hysterically with some very strong words in the police car on the way to the police station. So besides receiving a fine for public drunkenness, I was also fined for insulting an official on duty.”

Continue reading →

“Discrimination” in a “Multi-Faith” Society

Posted on by

A controversy broke out recently in the UK when a defendant in a court trial demanded the right to wear the niqab, even in the dock. The judge in the case ruled yesterday that the young woman may wear a veil when she is in the dock, but must remove it if she gives testimony. Spectators and the press will be prevented from seeing her face, however, thereby protecting her modesty.

Below is a BBC news report on this issue, displaying the usual multicultural bias. Many thanks to Vlad Tepes for uploading and annotating this video:

Here’s a list of links to recent media articles and opinion pieces about the issue of face veils in British courts and other institutions:

Continue reading →

Stalking the Mythical Islamophobe, Part 5

Posted on by

This post is the fifth in a series about the Turkish definition of the word “Islamophobia” presented at the OSCE meeting in Vienna on July 12, 2013. Previously: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4.

To recap: this is the definition of Islamophobia provided by Umut Topcuoglu in July 2013. Emphasis has been added to thirteen words or phrases that deserve further attention:

Islamophobia is a contemporary form of racism and xenophobia motivated by unfounded fear, mistrust, and hatred of Muslims and Islam. Islamophobia is also manifested through intolerance, discrimination, unequal treatment, prejudice, stereotyping, hostility, and adverse public discourse. Differentiating from classical racism and xenophobia [sic], Islamophobia is mainly based on stigmatization of a religion and its followers, and as such, Islamophobia is an affront to the human rights and dignity of Muslims.

The thirteen highlighted terms were discussed in Parts 3 and 4. Below are the conclusions to be drawn from this analysis.

Conclusions

The definition of Islamophobia as presented by Umut Topcuoglu fails to meet even minimal standards of logic, coherence, and objectivity. As such it must be rejected for any further usage in OSCE proceedings.

As mentioned above, six of the terms used in the definition (“racism”, “xenophobia”, “intolerance”, “discrimination”, “prejudice”, and “stereotyping”) are “loaded”, in the sense that they are either of recent coinage or have recently acquired new meanings, which alone is reason enough to render the definition questionable for any scholarly use. Words that are commonly used to demonize, intimidate, and marginalize certain viewpoints are always unacceptable in presentations that affect public policy. Unless the controversial “loaded” terms are themselves clearly defined, they should be excluded.

The definition fails utterly through its inclusion of three phrases (#7, “unequal treatment”, #13, “stigmatization of a religion and its followers”, and #4, “unfounded fear, mistrust, and hatred”). Specifically:

Unequal treatment. As described in the “Examination of Terms”, Islam itself (via Shariah) treats non-Muslims differently from Muslims. Under the given definition, Muslims would themselves be guilty of “Islamophobia”. This is a logical absurdity, and the definition falls because of it.

Stigmatization of a religion and its followers. The vast majority of Islam-critics do not “describe or identify [the Islamic religion] in opprobrious terms”. Their critiques are focused almost entirely on the tenets of Islamic law (and the practical implementation of those tenets), which are not at all religious. Criticism of the religious elements of Islam is rare, mild, and often non-existent. This term therefore deflects the discussion into a “straw man” argument, and the definition falls because of it.

Unfounded fear, mistrust, and hatred. This is the heart of the definition of “Islamophobia”. Any fear, mistrust, or hatred of Islam must be shown to be unfounded if it is to constitute Islamophobia. As previously demonstrated, millions of non-Muslims all over the world have well-founded empirical reasons to fear Islam, and thus cannot possibly be described as “Islamophobes”. Furthermore, any investigation into the basis for the fear of Islam — which requires research into and discussion of the collective behavior of self-identified Muslims in real-world situations — is almost always itself condemned as “Islamophobia”. Therefore the definition of “Islamophobia” transforms the word into a self-referential term. This is a violation of logic, and the definition falls because of it.

Continue reading →

Descriptive vs. Normative

Posted on by

Last week Takuan Seiyo weighed in on the controversy over Diana West’s book American Betrayal. The comment thread that developed on his post is quite extensive, and ranges over a lot of topics related to Soviet Communist penetration of the United States government during World War Two.

One of the issues raised concerns the debate over where a second front in Europe would be opened. Ms. West’s book presents extensive evidence that Soviet agents or sympathizers in the American government helped influence the final decision to land in Normandy and advance through France. A major alternative that was considered and rejected was a landing at the head of the Adriatic with an advance through the Balkans to Vienna.

Ms. West was not advocating for either option, but simply presenting the evidence that agents of influence had in fact helped sway the strategic decision.

Many commenters seemed to assume that she believed the “Italian option” would have been better. This is an example of confusing descriptive text with normative text. I have often run into the same problem myself — if I simply describe the arguments for a controversial position, without polemical embellishment or condemnatory phrasing, readers assume that I am advocating that position. Which I am not — if I advocate for something, you’ll know it: I will expressly state my advocacy in no uncertain terms.

Ms. West left a comment on Takuan’s essay clarifying the issue, but the post has now drifted so far down the page that many people will not see it. She asked me to reproduce it as a separate post, and I am happy to do so here.

From Diana West:

There is this erroneous notion abroad that in I formulate military strategy in American Betrayal. Not so! I am not a military strategist, nor do I claim to be. In my examination of Soviet influence on the Allied policy-making chain I consider the arguments posed by leading military strategists of the day — many of whom, in this case, championed continuing Allied efforts in southern Europe.

To wit (from pp. 263-264):

The decision to abandon Italy as an expanding, leading front at the end of 1943 made very little sense—unless, cynically, the true objective was to ensure that Central and Eastern Europe remained open for Soviet invasion. Then again, maybe that’s putting things too crudely, too harshly. Let me rephrase: The advantages to enlarging upon Anglo-American gains in Italy were obvious. There was no good strategic objective to be served by virtually abandoning this theater. Not because I say so. The top U.S. commander of strategic bombing in Europe, Gen. Carl Spaatz, said so, too. Capt. Harry C. Butcher recounted Spaatz’s views as expressed to Harry Hopkins on November 23, 1943, in the run-up to the Cairo Conference.

‘Spaatz didn’t think OVERLORD was necessary or desirable. He said it would be a much better investment to build up forces in Italy to push the Germans across the Po, taking and using airfields as we come to them, thus shortening the bombing run into Germany. He foresaw the possibility of getting the ground forces into Austria and Vienna, where additional fields would afford shuttle service for bombing attack against the heart of German industry, which has moved into this heretofore practically safe area.’ …

p. 264:

Continue reading →

Transcript of Pre-Clearance Interview With Aaron Alexis

Posted on by

Interviewer met with Subject to discuss potential problems with his application for a “secret” clearance while working at the Washington Navy Yard.

Interviewer:   I see you had a couple of incidents involving the discharge of firearms during the last ten years or so.
Subject:   Yes, sir.
Interviewer:   And the police were involved.
Subject:   Yes, sir.
Interviewer:   Hmm… Have you ever attended a Tea Party event?
Subject:   No, sir.
Interviewer:   Do you have a Ron Paul bumper sticker on your car?
Subject:   No, sir. Nothing like that.
Interviewer:   Would you describe yourself as a “patriot”?
Subject:   Absolutely not, sir.
Interviewer:   Have you ever expressed a reverence for the United States Constitution?
Subject:   No, sir. Not ever.
Interviewer:   All right, then… I don’t see any problems here. (stamping paper) This will go through channels, and you’ll get your badge in two or three days.
Subject:   Thank you, sir.
 

Gates of Vienna News Feed 9/16/2013

Posted on by

An African American Buddhist and former Naval reservist named Aaron Alexis went on a shooting spree in the Washington Navy Yard this morning, killing twelve people and injuring at least twelve more. Police officers eventually shot and killed Mr. Alexis. No motive for the attack has as yet been determined. The incident prompted congressional Democrats to renew their calls for stricter gun control.

In other news, a United Nations inspectors’ report confirmed that chemical weapons have indeed been used in Syria, without assigning any blame for who used them. Meanwhile, Italy reports that 3,300 Syrian refugees landed on its shores in the past month.

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

Thanks to Apollon Zamp, C. Cantoni, Fjordman, Insubria, JD, JP, KP, 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.

Continue reading →

Stalking the Mythical Islamophobe, Part 4

Posted on by

This post is the fourth in a series about the Turkish definition of the word “Islamophobia” presented at the OSCE meeting in Vienna on July 12, 2013. Previously: Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.

An Examination of Terms: 8 Through 13

To recap: this is the definition of Islamophobia provided by Umut Topcuoglu in July 2013. Emphasis has been added to thirteen words or phrases that deserve further attention:

Islamophobia is a contemporary form of racism and xenophobia motivated by unfounded fear, mistrust, and hatred of Muslims and Islam. Islamophobia is also manifested through intolerance, discrimination, unequal treatment, prejudice, stereotyping, hostility, and adverse public discourse. Differentiating from classical racism and xenophobia [sic], Islamophobia is mainly based on stigmatization of a religion and its followers, and as such, Islamophobia is an affront to the human rights and dignity of Muslims.

The first seven highlighted terms were discussed in Part 3. The analysis of the final six is below.

8. Prejudice

“Prejudice” is another loaded word that demands extra scrutiny in light of its frequent misuse. We may assume that Mr. Topcuoglu, in formulating his definition of “Islamophobia”, had in mind this definition of prejudice:

2c:   an irrational attitude of hostility directed against an individual, a group, a race, or their supposed characteristics
 

The following is an excerpt from lessons that are taught to ninth-graders using Hadith, a recent Saudi school text: [1]

When God sent his Prophet Muhammad, He abrogated with his law all other laws and He commanded all people, including the people of the book, to believe him and to follow him. The people of the book should have been the first to believe him because they find him in their scriptures.

The clash between this Muslim nation and the Jews and Christians has endured, and it will continue as long as God wills. In this hadith, Muhammad gives us an example of the battle between the Muslims and the Jews.

The above passage narrates Abu Hurayrah, as recorded by Bhukari and Muslim, who are also the most authoritative and second most authoritative hadith scholars respectively, for the following: [2]

Narrated by Abu Hurayrah: The Prophet said, “The hour [of judgment] will not come until the Muslims fight the Jews and kill them. It will not come until the Jew hides behind rocks and trees. It will not come until the rocks or the trees say, ‘O Muslim! O servant of God! There is a Jew behind me. Come and kill him. Except for the gharqad, which is a tree of the Jews.’”

An objective observer cannot help but note that these passages, taken from scriptural texts confirmed as authoritative by the consensus of Islamic scholars, display irrational hostility towards both Jews and Christians (the former constituting a race as well as a religious group). This demonstrates that the core sacred writings of Islam contain evidence of racial and religious prejudice against Jews and Christians.

This is not to say that there may not also exist prejudice against Muslims among non-Muslims. However, we are ill-served by an overwhelming institutional emphasis on one type of sectarian prejudice when others — amply attested both by the historical record and by current events — are almost completely neglected.

9. Stereotyping

This is another loaded word that is commonly used to stigmatize anyone who criticizes — or even simply observes and comments on — the behavior of members of a designated “protected” group.

The dictionary tells us that “stereotyping” is the making of a stereotype:

2:   something conforming to a fixed or general pattern; especially: a standardized mental picture that is held in common by members of a group and that represents an oversimplified opinion, prejudiced attitude, or uncritical judgment
 

Determining exactly what constitutes an “oversimplified opinion” requires a very subjective judgment. How much can an opinion be simplified before it is “oversimplified”? How much generalization about a distinct group is allowed before it becomes a “prejudiced attitude”?

Continue reading →

Revisiting the Diana West Controversy

Posted on by

David Solway has published an overview of the controversy over Diana West’s book American Betrayal at Pajamas Media. Some excerpts are below:

Revisiting the Diana West Controversy
The ongoing implosion of the conservative ethos.

By David Solway

The controversy currently raging among conservative luminaries over the substantive nature and scholarly status of Diana West’s new book, American Betrayal, need not be rehearsed in detail here; its features are by now reasonably familiar to most readers of the political sites. But it will do no harm to offer a schematic overview of the broad contours of the “debate”—to give it the politest of tags.

[…]

I do not wish to enter into the vortex of the dispute. I readily admit that I am no expert on the subject West’s volume addresses. Was Harry Hopkins the infamous KGB agent 19 or was it Laurence Duggan? Was American WWII policy subtly shaped and surreptitiously directed by Soviet espionage and penetration of the inner circles of the White House—and if so, to what degree? Was Eastern Europe lost to “Uncle Joe” Stalin owing to American ineptitude or to Communist infiltration of the decision-making process? I am in no position to weigh in on the matter. These issues may—or may not—be satisfactorily settled in the future, provided an honest, impartial, and intellectual debate is permitted to flourish without rancor and personal vituperation.

Continue reading →

Who Has the Biggest Dictator?

Posted on by

After I read the concern about our having fun with Putin posters, I thought long and hard about what our reader had said. But I decided finally that it is important to use mockery against this dangerous man currently in the White House. If Putin is a good weapon, by all means let us employ him in one more effort to wake up our narcoleptic countrymen, sated and distracted as they appear to be by bread and never-ending circuses.

For sure Vladimir is a dangerous, creepy killer. He comes from a long line of them in a country which has never had either an authentic rule of law based on individual liberties or any philosophical foundation regarding personal property rights. That’s why it has no real middle class.

America is headed in the same direction if we don’t put on the brakes. Look at who we re-elected in our land of the free. If you’re an American, the country in which you were born no longer exists. But the place you live in now grows increasingly foreign: statist, over-regulated, ever-poorer, and frankly socialist in its regulations and intentions.

What I will describe is a partial list. I’m not sure anyone could name everything; if I took my time to arrange this list into a more orderly pattern, perhaps the deeply insidious nature of the Democrats’ Long-Term Plan to Convert America Into a Soviet would be more readily apparent. But these items are just as they occur to me. A real follower of the news could give you more stunning detail, maybe even a flowchart of operations.

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

People have remarked that Obama does best when he’s campaigning, and that it’s all he seems to do when not on the golf course. There’s a reason for that: he has been building a personal campaign chest (this one is actually outside the control of the Democrat Party). It’s not for personal use, but he’ll be able to direct funds for decades, bankrolling the candidates of his choice. Thus, Organize for Obama, his original fund-raising arm, morphed into Organize for America and then into Organize for Action. For reasons I’ve not looked into, this OfA scam doesn’t have to follow the usual non-profit rules. So who’s laughing at the metrosexual Community Organizer now?

One thing to consider: this OfA entity may draw down a lot of the money which could’ve gone to Hillary for 2016. She will have to ask, and the vigorish will be steep.

As for his personal wealth, many on the Right fear he won’t leave office in 2016. Not to worry. There have been reports, starting just before the 2012 campaign, that he has a thirty-five million-dollar compound being put together in Hawaii. The large estate, with room for Secret Service agents (for whose housing our government is to be billed) will be donated by ‘friends’. It is simply waiting for the moment he steps down from the throne to devote himself to golf and political games; he won’t ever have to answer to the public again. It is said he is bored now, waiting for his lame duck session to be over.

Do you think boredom may drive his excellent foreign adventures in Libya, Syria, Egypt and Jordan? That could be one answer: we could perhaps have an Alexander on our hands who needs new kingdoms to conquer.

Another way he resembles Putin: Obama’s purported “transparent” governance is surely the most occluded of any previous president, excepting perhaps FDR. He is secretive and impulsive and we’ve almost become inured to the lies. Often we are left to guess what he’s going to do next since he has stiff-armed the other branches of government to become the closest thing we’ve ever had to a despot. In appointing czars directors to head the complex plethora of bureaucratic Regulations Offices, he has a great deal of overt, extra-constitutional power. Nor is he shy about using it, for these people owe their positions to Obama and his staff.

This is an area in which Obama makes plain how much he disdains our Congress and the Courts. He has said publicly that the Constitution is a piece of paper; it doesn’t constrain him much, especially when it comes to interfering with or making war on other sovereign states that can’t fight back. If you doubted it before, surely his strange deportment regarding Libya, Egypt and Syria ought to make his despotism obvious. “I don’t need Congress. I can do it without them.”

Continue reading →

Gates of Vienna News Feed 9/15/2013

Posted on by

The secretary of the Arab League praised the Russian-U.S. accord on Syria’s chemical weapons, saying that it puts the region on track to a political solution. Meanwhile, with the likelihood of a military attack decreasing, Syrian students have returned to school. The rebels, however, are angry about the agreement.

In other news, thousands of Muslims joined a demonstration on the streets of Montreal yesterday to protest the Quebec government’s ban on the wearing of religious garb by public employees.

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

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

Continue reading →

The Turkish Spring Becomes a Hot Autumn

Posted on by

The summer vacation is over, and Turkish college students are returning for the fall semester. As predicted early in the summer, with the arrival of the students the unrest and demonstrations against the government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan have resumed. One young man was killed last week, and further protests have arisen in the wake of his death.

Many thanks to JLH for translating this article from Deutsche Welle:

Protests Flare Up Again

After a phase of comparative calm, violence returns to the streets of Turkey. The death of a 22 year-old demonstrator set off street battles in several cities. Observers expect a “hot autumn.”

Ahmet Atakan was struck in the head by a tear gas grenade, eyewitnesses said. Government representatives say he fell from the roof of a house, What is certain is that Ahmet Atakan is dead. And once again the conflict is ablaze between critics of the administration hitting the streets and police representing the regime. Once again, demonstrators are accusing the police of reacting with unnecessary severity against really harmless demonstrations. In Istanbul, in the early morning hours, the two sides had serious confrontations.

On Monday evening (9/9/2013), Atakan was the sixth demonstrator killed since the beginning of the anti-government demonstrations in June. A police officer also died in those demonstrations, which had flared up at a building project in Istanbul’s Gezi Park. And they have flared up again with the end of summer vacation.

Reasons for unrest are the same

Representatives of the government and of the protest movement agreed in predicting that new tensions could be expected in September at the beginning of winter semester at the universities. There was talk of a “hot autumn.”

The reasons which drove the alliance of anti-regime groups onto the streets in June are still present. The protest movement accuses Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan of authoritarian tendencies, arrogance and contempt for the opinion of dissidents. To be sure, the regime pledged improvement in June, but nothing concrete has been done. At the moment, it intends to accomplish the construction of an expressway through a campus of the Technical Near East University in Ankara with a large stand of trees. There is talk of protests against that, too.

“Tactics of psychological Warfare”

The regime is sticking by its line that there are no seriously dissatisfied citizens behind the protest movement, but political opponents of Erdogan, who want to bring the Prime Minister to his knees through the power of the streets. On Twitter, Mustafa Varank, adviser to Erdogan, accused the protest movement of spreading hate and lies using the death of the demonstrator Atakan, and of using “tactics of psychological warfare.”

Continue reading →