Monthly Archives: December 2013

VOSAN Calls Out Obama

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President Obama has voiced his support for amnesty — a.k.a. “immigration reform” — for illegal aliens. However, Mr. Obama has given no indication of support for immigrants, legal or illegal, who are at risk because of their apostasy from Islam.

The latest Victim of Sharia featured by the International Civil Liberties Alliance (ICLA) is Albina Kurmanbekova, who escaped Islam in Kyrgyzstan and is seeking asylum in the United States. According to the VOSAN report from ICLA:

Call For Obama To Intervene In Victim Of Sharia Asylum Request

27 December 2013, Basel, Switzerland: The International Civil Liberties Alliance (ICLA) has today launched a campaign in support of the recent asylum request of Albina Kurmanbekova in the United States.

VOSAN Program Director Chris Knowles said:

“Albina’s case is very worrying. Lawmakers need to be made aware of such cases. They need to understand the dangers that sharia can pose to individual human rights. Granting asylum in this case might even go some way to assuage worries that sharia principles will not be allowed to take root in the United States itself.”

Miss Kurmanbekova’s case is currently being heard by the US Citizenship and Immigration Services and a decision is imminent. She was born a Muslim in Kyrgyzstan but converted to Christianity. Apostasy is a crime under sharia law and returning her to her country of origin may be extremely harmful to her personal safety. Furthermore, in Kyrgyzstan the second class status of women under sharia is compounded by the local cultural practice of ‘bridenapping’. This combines kidnapping with forced marriage and the authorities seem reluctant to stamp out this wicked and degrading practice.

Albina’s case illustrates a widespread problem — the persecution of Christians. During the current holiday season we should be mindful that large numbers of Christians currently face severe persecution in many parts of the Islamic world. It is time for human rights leaders such as the United States to put this problem high on the international political agenda.

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The Concept of Sovereignty

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As reported here last week, Geert Wilders gave a speech in Turin on December 15 at the invitation of the Lega Nord. Below is a video of his speech (in English, with simultaneous translation into Italian) courtesy of the Padania chapter of Lega Nord.

Mr. Wilders departed from the prepared text at several points during his speech. Of particular note is his reference to European Commissioner Cecilia Malmström as “the hippie from Sweden”:

Great Expectorations

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The sputum is airborne again.

Regular readers will remember the “Spitting Professor” Dr. Erik Svensson, a professor of evolutionary biology at the University of Lund in Sweden. Dr. Svensson cause a bit of hubbub last summer by expressing a fervent desire via Twitter to spit in the face of Ingrid Carlqvist, due to his disagreements with her over political issues.

The resulting tweet-storm induced the university authorities to call Dr. Svensson on the carpet and have a little chat with him about his off-campus activities. Despite his displeasure with the esteemed professor’s behavior, in the end the Dean of the Faculty of Science at Lund University decided to allow him to retain his position on the faculty.

The furor over the Twitter-Spitter had died down by the end of August, and the issue was forgotten. Or so we thought.

Now the Spitting Professor has returned to the fray to have one final say against all those people who maligned him last summer. At one point during the fracas he had expressed his hope that understanding, moderation, and balance might replace all the nastiness and vitriol. However, Dr. Svensson seems to have changed his mind: on Christmas day he left a comment on our original post about the controversy that was notable for the depth and ferocity of its spitefulness.

He hates us. He will always hate us. He will fight against our views as much as he can.

How can we go on?

Here’s what the Spitting Professor had to say. NOTE: I have no way to authenticate the commenter’s identity as Erik Svensson, Professor of Biology at the University of Lund. His IP address was from a provider just to the west of Lund in southern Sweden. His email address was not the official University one (no fool he), but a normal-looking account with a popular email provider that included his name and location in the address. If the following text was submitted by a malicious hoaxter rather than the Twitter-Spitter, I apologize in advance to Professor Doctor Erik Svensson:

I have returned to this website, about 6 months after this ridiculous “affair”, which would never have become any affair at all, if it were not for the right-wing extremists and fascists around Ingrid Carlqvist (“Dispatch International”, “Exponerat”, “Fria Tider” and this blog) and their campaign against me and my right to excercise [sic] free speech, as any other Swedish citizen.

I, like any other Swedish citizen, have the right to express my political opinion outside my work, including on blogs, Twitter, Facebook and other social media. It is simply not a matter for my employer (Lund University) what I say, or how I express myself, outside my work. The campaign from the fascists and right-wing extremists is actually a campaign against free speech, including the campaign from this far-right blog.

I just clarify a few points here, and then I will never more waste my time on your pathetic blog:

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Gates of Vienna News Feed 12/26/2013

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Thousands of Greeks are standing in line in government offices waiting to unregister their cars before the end of the year. The continuing financial crisis has forced many people to try to save money by avoiding the 2014 vehicle tax.

In other news, Egyptian authorities arrested dozens of Muslim Brotherhood supporters under the new law declaring it to be a terrorist organization.

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

Thanks to C. Cantoni, Fjordman, Insubria, JD, Papa Whiskey, Steen, Takuan Seiyo, 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 Revenant Communists of Slovenia

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A few years ago I compared the death of Communism with the “death” of John Barleycorn in the traditional English song. Despite being most thoroughly mowed, pitchforked, and ground to pieces, Communism somehow survived in various forms and permutations.

“They have worked their will on John Barleycorn, but he lived to tell the tale…”

And so it was with Slovenia. When the Yugoslav federation fell apart in the early 1990s, Slovenia managed to gain its independence, but it did not rid itself of the Communists that had run the country since World War Two. The following video describes the way the former nomenklatura of the Party managed to insert themselves into positions of power and gain control of privatized state assets after Slovenia became an independent state in 1991. The multiple shifting descendants of the Communist Party have maintained control of major media outlets and run the judicial system, all the while persecuting leading figures of the opposition.

Many thanks to TC for tipping us about this report:

Here’s little Sir John in a nut-brown bowl,
And brandy in a glass;
And little Sir John in the nut-brown bowl
Proved the stronger man at last.
And the huntsman he can’t hunt the fox,
Nor so loudly blow his horn,
And the tinker he can’t mend kettles or pots
Without a little of Barleycorn.

Gates of Vienna News Feed 12/25/2013

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The mujahideen of Iraq celebrated Christmas by setting off three separate bombs in Christian areas of Baghdad. At least 37 people were killed, and dozens more wounded.

In other news, the Egyptian government has officially declared the Muslim Brotherhood to be a terrorist organization.

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

Thanks to Fjordman, Insubria, JD, Jerry Gordon, 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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Merry Christmas 1939

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Once we move beyond childhood the Christmas season is a bittersweet experience. That may be why for some of us the season of Advent looms larger now: preparation matters more the day of Christmas itself. Some of us see this day as simply a place to start the Christian year and to end the secular one.

The Christian Liturgical Year is a complex tapestry woven over millennia and borrowing from many cultures. None of the feasts is accidental but almost none is an original creation; each arose in media res to answer a particular need of the moment. It helps to contemplate them in the same way crafty musicians look at the work of musicians who came before them, i.e., as inspired revelations of kindred spirits from whom they are – implicitly at least – free to steal a rhythm, cop a rhyme.

So it is with spiritual traditions. In this case, if you scrape away the accretions of pomp and circumstance to better see the foundations you find the many creative borrowings used to build the edifice of the Christian Liturgical Year. The latter is itself merely a way of marking time in an endless circling and returning to the nodes of a particular life. That’s the thing about Christianity and Western culture: we took a circle and turned it into a spiral . Circles merely repeat. Spirals allow us new perspectives of the same landscape – i.e., our own life’s journey woven into a larger frame.

In truth, we Christians are simply the followers of one obscure rabbi. Limping along, we “amended” Jews are flanked on either side by Roman Law and Greek philosophy. Yet our moral basis remains firmly on the Ten Commandments even as we reach for that Higher Commandment: to love our God with our whole heart, soul, and mind, even as we struggle to love our neighbor as ourselves. Yes, it’s quite a reach, that two-part perfect harmony, especially if you begin at the end, by trying to love yourself. If you’re lucky you may once or twice meet someone who embodies this seemingly impossible “Law”. It’s a Law the same way gravity is though the results of violations are not so immediately seen. Still, we ignore it at our own peril.

Meanwhile it helps to see Christmas (which has grown ever more frenetic and harried as it has detached itself from those angels and shepherds) as simply another example of the endless cycle embedded in our linear history. The holy day of Bethlehem has returned inexorably to the feast it was designed to replace: Saturnalia. Funny how that plus ça change thing works, isn’t it? We are quickly losing our taste for empire even as we become more like Rome during its final decadence. You don’t need me to point out sad, desperate parallels.

The Baron has often alluded to our present times as a return to 1939. He’s right: this moment partakes of that same tragedy in some way that is beyond putting into words. When I heard our soldiers had been sent to Saudi Arabia in the days before Christmas, it felt like another shoe dropping from one more foot on the centipede.

Because our blog has somehow turned – or been turned – to face Europe, to bridge the divide that separates us from our forefathers, this Christmas carol from the dark days in France seemed appropriate for this Christmas of 2013:


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Children, Leave the String Alone!

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Our weather isn’t really like that — at Schloss Bodissey, Christmas Day 2013 dawned cold, but sunny and bright. The photo above is actually from February 2006.

And strictly speaking, the following poem isn’t a Christmas poem, either. But it’s about children untying packages, so it will do:

Warning to Children
by Robert Graves
Children, if you dare to think
Of the greatness, rareness, muchness
Fewness of this precious only
Endless world in which you say
You live, you think of things like this:
Blocks of slate enclosing dappled
Red and green, enclosing tawny
Yellow nets, enclosing white
And black acres of dominoes,
Where a neat brown paper parcel
Tempts you to untie the string.
In the parcel a small island,
On the island a large tree,
On the tree a husky fruit.
Strip the husk and pare the rind off:
In the kernel you will see
Blocks of slate enclosed by dappled
Red and green, enclosed by tawny
Yellow nets, enclosed by white
And black acres of dominoes,
Where the same brown paper parcel —
Children, leave the string alone!

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Gates of Vienna News Feed 12/24/2013

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An emergency alert was issued by the Department of Homeland Security this evening when an unidentified aircraft was spotted on radar approaching the roof of the White House. A large man in a red suit was subsequently detected by surveillance cameras lowering sixteen tons of number nine coal down the chimney into the First Family’s private living quarters.

In other news, angry demonstrators in the Egyptian city of Mansoura went on the rampage and attacked Muslim Brotherhood property in the city. They blamed the Ikhwan for an earlier bombing at the security directorate that left fifteen people dead.

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

Thanks to C. Cantoni, Caroline Glick, Fjordman, Insubria, JD, 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.

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The New Dezinformatsiya

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Several years ago I wrote about the Soviet counterintelligence state, whose principal intelligence organ underwent numerous mutations from 1917 to 1991, becoming successively the Cheka, the OGPU, the MGB, the NKVD, and various other acronyms before it settled into its final form as the KGB in the 1950s. The state intelligence apparatus did not dissolve after the Soviet Union collapsed, but was reorganized as the FSB, and still serves as the security service for the Russian Republic.

In addition to enforcing total Bolshevik control within Soviet Union, the KGB was tasked with sowing confusion, conflict, destabilization, and revolution abroad. Ten broad classes of counterintelligence were conducted abroad by Soviet agents and their proxies:

1.  provocation (provokatsiya)
2.  penetration (proniknoveniye)
3.  fabrication (fabrikatsiya)
4.  diversion (diversiya)
5.  agent of influence (agent vliyaniya or agent po vliyaniyu)
6.  clandestine work (konspiratsiya)
7.  disinformation (dezinformatsiya)
8.  wet affairs (mokrye dela)
9.  direct action (aktivnyye akty)
10.  combination (kombinatsiya)
 

As Ion Pacepa notes in his superb book Disinformation, #7 dezinformatsiya was considered by the Soviets to be the most effective tool of subversion against the capitalist world. The dissemination of disinformation absorbed more resources and manpower than traditional espionage (that is, the collection and analysis of the enemy’s secrets). The acquisition of the H-bomb was a crucial necessity, but so was causing disgust, doubt, and despair in the hearts of ordinary Westerners.

Interestingly enough, a wave of disinformation recently surfaced here in the comment threads at Gates of Vienna. I didn’t pay much attention to it at first; it took me a while to catch on to what the new commenters were up to. They obeyed our rules and didn’t engage in ad hominem attacks — their comments were just hostile, and I’m used to that.

The new trolls asserted various negative things about Christians, white people, Europeans, etc. They left information contradicting the post or other commenters in ways that made Muslims look good or non-Muslims look bad, but without providing any links.

What made me start paying attention was the issue of the teenage girl in New Zealand who was forced to wear a burka to cover up her injuries after her father beat her up. Several commenters — who may have been sock puppets for a single operative — appeared on the news feed thread and stated that the information in this news story was incorrect, that the family were Maoris and not Muslims. They reported that major media outlets in New Zealand had in fact run corrections. They even named specific media outlets, but supplied no links.

By this time I had realized we were being trolled, and deleted all the new instances of such comments. While I was at it, I took the trouble to look more deeply into the New Zealand story. After extensive searching through media reports, I concluded that no such corrections existed. There weren’t any stories that contradicted the initial reports from The New Zealand Herald.

This confirmed that we were the target of a deliberate, sophisticated disinformation campaign.

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Gates of Vienna News Feed 12/23/2013

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The British grocery chain Marks & Spencer has reversed its earlier policy and apologized to a customer who was refused service by a Muslim sales assistant. The customer wanted to buy alcohol, and the checkout clerk declined to sell it to him on religious grounds.

In other news, Mikhail Kalashnikov, the Russian inventor of the AK-47, has died at the age of 94.

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

Thanks to C. Cantoni, Fjordman, Insubria, JD, Jerry Gordon, 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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“The Worst Thing That Can Happen to a Society”

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Geert Wilders has made his revised version of the Saudi flag into a bumper sticker, and has raised some hackles among Muslim leaders by doing so.

In the following video, Mr. Wilders explains his motives for creating the sticker to a hostile interviewer. Many thanks to SimonXML for the translation, and to Vlad Tepes for the subtitling:

Transcript:

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Да вдигнем знамето на Истината и Свободата!

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Note: this is a Bulgarian version of “Let us Raise a Flag of Truth and Liberation” by Geert Wilders, published here on November 24. Many thanks to RR for the translation.

Да вдигнем знамето на Истината и Свободата!
от Geert Wilders

Преди девет години, същия месец – ноември 2004 – полицаи с бронежилетки и автомати ме взеха от къщи и ме откараха в безопасно убежище. Това се случи два дена след като режисьорът и критик на исляма Тео ван Гог бе убит от мохамеданин-екзекутор посред бял ден на една амстердамска улица. Полицията ме отведе в безопасност, защото ислямските престъпници заплашваха с убийство и мене. Защото и аз казвах истината за исляма – за тая най-огромна заплаха срещу свободата ни и срещу цивилизацията ни.

От оная зловеща дата преди девет години съм принуден да живея под постоянна полицейска защита. Обитавал съм казарми, затвори и приюти. Заплахите продължават и до днес и ме лишават от личното ми пространство и свобода.

Но аз ще продължа да говоря. Знамето на Саудитска Арабия горделиво прогласява „Шахада“-та или кратката вероизповед на исляма: „Няма Бог освен Аллах и Мохамед е Пратеникът на Аллах“.

В памет на изминалите девет години, в памет на хилядите жертви, умъртвени през тоя период от ислямските убийци – в Лондон, в Москва, в Мумбай, в Найроби и по безбройни други места; в памет на милионите човешки същества – жени, хора, отхвърлили исляма, хора немохамедани – които всекидневно търпят дискриминация и унижения от злата идеология на исляма и потисническия му закон, Шариата: – Аз предлагам на ислямския свят ново знаме – знаме, което провъзгласява истината и свободата: „ИСЛЯМЪТ Е ЛЪЖА! МОХАМЕД Е ПРЕСТЪПНИК! КОРАНЪТ Е ОТРОВА!“

Едва когато ислямският свят успее да осъзнае тези истини, ще бъде способен да се освободи от злото и да направи света по-добро и по-безопасно място за всички хора.

Едва когато свободният свят успее да осъзнае, че ислямът е преди всичко тоталитарна идеология, а не религия, той ще стане способен да защитава свободите и ценностите си.

Languages available for “Let us Raise a Flag of Truth and Liberation”:

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