Monthly Archives: February 2014

Getting With the Program

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Winter Fundraiser 2014, Day Three

Our focus during this week’s fundraiser is on “odd jobs”: how Dymphna and I came to take this particular odd job, and all the other odd jobs we’ve had to take over the years to keep going.

The unusual thing about this particular job is its distributed paymasters. We don’t have one boss; we have hundreds of them. By holding these quarterly blegs, we’ve crowdsourced our income — a most peculiar situation. That’s what makes this the oddest job of all.

Tip jarThe crowdfunding process gets a bit tricky when we need a raise, which is the position we find ourselves in this quarter. As I mentioned on Monday morning, the costs of keeping this blog going rose substantially after DoS attacks and increased traffic forced us into a more robust type of hosting. This is a not unexpected consequence of prominent Counterjihad activism, but still, it makes for a financially anxious lifestyle.

The first two days of the fundraiser are evidence that our readers paid attention to our need for a raise. The response has been swift and generous, and we are grateful to all of you, the issuers of our paychecks.

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As I mentioned in the first post of this series, by the time I left college I had decided to become an artist. I tried it for a year after I graduated, and failed miserably. Not at painting — I painted some pretty good pictures during those months — but at making enough money to stay alive. I remember buying A&P Tudor Premium beer at $2 a sixpack; that’s how desperate I was. I used to say that after the first two or three, you didn’t care how it tasted.

So the following summer I moved back in with my parents and got a job. Two of them, actually: driving a taxi (during the daytime) and working as a sales clerk in a tuxedo rental store (in the evenings). Those jobs were a temporary holding pattern until I landed a position in my field of expertise, which was mathematics. That fall I took a job as a mathematician/programmer at the VA hospital in Washington D.C.

I’d only had a two-hour course in computer programming when I was in college, but that was enough to get me the job. Those were the early days of the computer boom, and the demand for programmers was fierce. A bachelor’s degree in Math and a working knowledge of FORTRAN was all that was needed to find a good job in the field.

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Gates of Vienna News Feed 2/25/2014

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The Islamic terror group Boko Haram attacked a school in northeastern Nigeria, killing 29 pupils and wounding an unknown number of others. Many of the dead children burned to death when the terrorists set fire to the school.

In other news, Norwegian police have rejected Anders Behring Breivik’s complaints that he was being tortured in prison. The police do not think that being forced to use an old Playstation constitutes torture.

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

Thanks to Caroline Glick, Egghead, Fjordman, heroyalwhyness, Insubria, JD, JP, 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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Icebergophobia on the Titanic

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

NOTE: The PayPal link for Fjordman is not to be confused with the Gates of Vienna donation button. That is the tip cup on our sidebar; Fjordman’s is at the foot of his post.

Icebergophobia on the Titanic
by Fjordman

In the spring of 2013, the journalist Simen Sætre published a highly uneven Norwegian-language biography of me, one that I did not ask to be written.

In late 2013, Mr. Sætre published a new afterword to the pocket edition of his book. In it he stated that my texts “were never meant seriously.” He further proceeded to explain my thought processes by comparing me to the person portrayed in the text The Portrait of the Antisemite, written in 1945 by Jean-Paul Sartre. He insinuates a psychological explanation and indicates that am mainly writing in order to struggle with my inner demons. Sætre explicitly asserts that my texts are not fact-based or rooted in reality.

I’ll respond with some facts, starting with a few simple but significant numbers.

By mid-2013, Bangladesh was estimated to have nearly 164 million inhabitants. Assuming a population growth rate of 1.59%, this equals an addition of about 2.6 million people every year. Another overwhelmingly Muslim country, Pakistan, was estimated to harbor 193 million people. With a population growth rate of 1,52%, that makes for 2.9 million more Pakistanis annually. Combining the two countries, Bangladesh and Pakistan grow by approximately 5.5 million people every year. That’s the annual population growth of just two Muslim countries.

Norway in early 2014 had a population of just over 5 million people. This already includes a significant number of recent immigrants. When I was a boy, there were roughly 4 million inhabitants of Norway. Some of the newcomers are Swedes or Poles, but many of the recent immigrants come from the Islamic world, Africa and other parts of the global South.

This essentially means that the population growth of just two Muslim countries is in principle enough to overwhelm a small Scandinavian country such as Norway in just a single year. Those are simple facts.

If current policies and trends continue, the natives will be turned into a minority in their own country in Norway, Sweden and several other Western European states within this century. Whether this happens in 2040 or 2060, it is simply a matter of time.

Combining all of the Scandinavian and Nordic countries — Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland and Iceland —by mid-2013 these had a total population of less than 26 million people. Again, this already includes quite a few recent immigrants who didn’t live in these countries 40 years earlier.

Egypt is the most populous country in the Arabic-speaking world. In 1882, it had 6.7 million inhabitants. This is just a little bit more than the population today of countries such as Norway, Denmark or Finland, and less than that of Sweden. In 1947, the year my father was born, the population of Egypt was 19 million people. In 1986 it was 48 million; in 1996, 59 million. The country harbored 85 million people in 2013, and probably 86 million or more in 2014.

Egypt’s population grew by over 26 million people from the middle of the 1990s until 2014. This means that the population growth in a single Arab country in just one generation is greater than the total population of all of the Nordic countries put together. Forecasters predict that Egypt could have as many as 137 million people in 2050, up from less than 7 million in 1882.

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Special Benefits for Tyrants in the UN

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This arrived in a direct message from a Twitter follower account…

“UNWatch” I think. Learn something new every day. The account doesn’t have to “follow” you to send a direct message. Found out when I tried to send a thank you. Useful information, that.

[If they stop by perhaps they’ll leave their information in the comments. Or maybe not. Oh, who knows?? Maybe they can send seekrit messages but don’t actually want our racist, islamophobic cooties or sumpn. Yawn…zzzzz]


Ain’t it grand? Four Biggies – gang leaders when it comes to sitting on the chest of Individual Liberty and bashing her brains in with her very own torch – are now proud members of the corrupt UN’s Council on Human Rights.

I thought you’d want to know that these strong men are acting courageously so you can sleep more soundly at night.

A Learning Experience

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Winter Fundraiser 2014, Day Two

When the Baron suggested “Odd Jobs” for our theme, it made me smile in remembrance. So many creative ways to keep the wolf from the door. Or, in our case, the coyotes, since they are becoming more common in our area. They must be attracted by the hordes of white-tailed deer.

Who would’ve thought all those years of doing varied temporary work would have been the perfect preparation for riding the intertubes on Gates of Vienna? Had we not gone through decades of economic uncertainty, living by the Baron’s sheer persistence and optimism, would we be able to do this now? I don’t know for sure, but I suspect those years prepared us for this incarnation. Who could ever have guessed?

When I met the Baron and moved to Virginia, it was a culture shock. No central heat or air conditioning, isolated from the busy-ness of the city, living among people who’d been here for endless generations… I was a long time coming to terms with a new way of life. Heck, I was a long time figuring out what people were saying!

The Baron chose the Middle of Nowhere and I chose the Baron so that was that. What impressed me back then still does: his optimism, his complete integrity and his persistence. All of those qualities would end up serving him well when we began this blog. However, when we started it was meant merely to serve as a distraction for me and as a connection between us while he was away at work during the week. Never did we intend it, ten years later, to have become our daily center of gravity. Sometimes it feels as though Gates of Vienna is a child, an eternal child who grows and changes but will never be able to get around without a guiding hand.

Tip jarWe’ve described before how we got here, now the time has come to talk about how we managed to stay and even to prosper after a fashion. This part of Virginia is a good place to be if you want to scrape by while you spend your time doing something you want above all else. For the Baron, that was painting landscapes — dozens and dozens and dozens of them from the age of seven until his eyes gave out. In the beginning he kept careful records of each one, when it was painted and where it went after it was sold. I’m not so sure he was that meticulous at the end, when he knew his sight was changing. [Note from the Baron, who did the final edit: Yes, I kept complete records right up until the last painting.]

The Baron always (or nearly so) painted on the scene; he wasn’t ever interested in studio work. So when it became too cold to paint, he turned his attention to making enough money doing something else to get by till the warm weather returned.

And that was my intention also: I didn’t want to set the world on fire, I simply wanted to keep bringing in enough fuel to keep the home fires lit. My jobs were, for the most part, pedestrian. I did enjoy working as a chef until the owner started pitching small tomatoes at me during some tense times in the kitchen. And I loved community work — being invited in to teach small groups about the Nurturing Parent Program and how it was designed to reverse and eradicate child abuse. It was easy to be enthusiastic about a program actually designed to create a practical, workable peace, one (formerly damaged) family at a time. No utopias, thank you. Meeting the founder, Dr. Bavolek, was a turning point in my life. Had my mother not been forced to come to live with us, I’d have stayed with his program continuing to teach facilitators how to implement this life-saving program in their communities.

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Perhaps it would be best to back up a bit and start with the academic or teaching jobs from early on. Those two words aren’t always synonymous, but in ideal circumstances they work synchronously. While the Baron’s time doing this didn’t play a large part in our lives, during the years they lasted the experience gave us enough background to choose home-schooling when our turn came to educate our own son.

I think this era began when the Baron saw an ad for a company that sent out private tutors to people’s houses. Given that the academic year mostly coincided with his non-painting time, it was a good fit. His academic skills were valuable, particularly in Math, where there is a perennial shortage.

Sometimes he found the jobs and sometimes they found him. These ‘academic’ assignments were a string of referrals, though I don’t quite remember how they were sequenced. I’ll let him remember that. At any rate, he’s a patient teacher and was always skilled at math. Later on, when the tutoring group folded, he went solo for a while. Some of those students were indeed Missions Impossible.

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Gates of Vienna News Feed 2/24/2014

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EU authorities are grappling with the thorny problem of how to determine if someone is gay. The issue arose because three asylum seekers who claimed they were gay — and might be persecuted if they were returned to their country of origin — were denied entry into the Netherlands.

In other news, the new government of Ukraine has issued an arrest warrant for deposed President Viktor Yanukovych, who is wanted for murder after the death of dozens of protesters during the recent violent demonstrations in Kiev.

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

Thanks to 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.

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An Explanatory Afterword

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For readers who were wondering why comments were closed on the previous post, the following text may provide some hints. It was my answer to a commenter named “Scottish Infidel” on a recent news feed thread.

Well, McInfidel, I’ll answer a few of your points.

The problem is you have a responsibility to air all views no matter how bias you are, this is an imperative part of running a website that deals with important issues.

No, I don’t, and no, it isn’t.

My responsibility is to run this site in a manner that seems to me to serve our mission in the best way possible. No more and no less. That means I exclude anything that seems detrimental to our mission, according to my own best judgment. Neither you nor anyone else (besides my wife) gets to tell me how to run this blog.

Those readers who are satisfied with the way we run it contribute their hard-earned money to enable us to keep it alive. Those who don’t save their money for what they consider a more worthwhile cause. Or, better yet, they get disgusted with my high-handed ways and go somewhere else.

I don’t know you personally and have nothing against you personally, though I can say I am not happy with the fact that if you plainly disagree with what someone says you shall fail to publish it.

You obviously haven’t been paying attention, or you’d have noticed that I approve innumerable comments I don’t agree with — including many of your own.

It’s not whether I agree with them, it’s whether I consider them detrimental to the value of this site. If I do, then out they go. It doesn’t disturb me in the slightest if I am “biased”, engaging in “censorship”, or committing any of the other offenses imputed to me by irate commenters whose words have been deleted.

After what I’ve been through over the past six years running this enterprise, such matters are of no consequence to me.

Everyone has something to bring to the table on here, denying them their points of view is basically the same as what the government agencies and MSM etc are doing across the globe .

I most definitely am not doing what the government does, since this is a private enterprise. I’m like the barman at the Rose & Crown — when I see a patron staggering around and getting belligerent, I say, “Looks like you’ve had enough, laddie! Out wi’ ye!” Then I pick him up by his virtual collar and belt and pitch him down the front steps onto the rain-soaked cobbles, with no right of appeal.

As for the MSM — they are biased in one direction, and I’m biased in the opposite direction. Big deal. I don’t care.

As soon as Zionism is mentioned it seems you clam up and don’t want to know, I have nothing against the Jewish peoples, though there is people in that faith who practice supremacy and even hate against non Jewish peoples, white gentiles call them what you may?

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The Protocols of the Princes of Saudia

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Our Israeli correspondent MC was prompted by certain recent comment threads here at Gates of Vienna to write the following analysis of what oil wealth has done for the Arabian peninsula.

The Protocols of the Princes of Saudia
by MC

One of the giveaways of the forgery that is known as The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is that the supposed dialogue happened in a graveyard. Now, ‘spooky churchyards’ are not a Jewish cultural hang-up, they are part of a Christian tradition of vampires and zombies.

It is thought that Protocols was authored in Russia by the Okhrana (Tsarist secret police) based upon documents captured from Socialist Revolutionaries concerning their aims. It was then rewritten to point the blame at Jews to enhance the effectiveness of the then-ongoing pogroms. Afterwards this pernicious document took on a life of its own and gave rise to the ‘Jewish World Takeover Conspiracy’ that is still prevalent today, even in the comments sections of Gates of Vienna.

Now even I accept that much of what is in the protocols has come to pass, but it has come to pass under the auspices of Socialism in its various forms, and not under Judaism. “Yes,” you might say, “but there are close links between Judaism and Socialism.”

Adolf Hitler perceived Judaism and Bolshevism as the same thing, and it is true that Jews were overly represented in the 1917 revolution, but they were quickly purged by Stalin in the 1920s and early 1930s. By 1938 the Kremlin was essentially Judenrein, and the Arch-Jewish Bolshevik Leon Trotsky was brutally murdered by Stalin in 1940.

Many people, however, still believe the original Russian propaganda: that a secretive Jewish Cabal rules the world.

I strongly suspect that a Cabal has enormous influence in world affairs, and that that Cabal has Jewish members is very probable; however, it is also even more probable that this Cabal has Christian and Muslim members as well.

There are factors that indicate that there is another entity sitting in the background pulling the strings, and that is the interrelated Royal Families of the Gulf states, centred upon Saudi Arabia.

Whatever is going on in the Jihad world these days seems to have a Saudi ‘eminence grise’ there in the shadows, be it in Boston or Manhattan, Syria or Bosnia.

Erdogan famously said, “The mosques are our barracks, the domes our helmets, the minarets our bayonets and the faithful our soldiers…”

So who is the major supplier of mosques to the world?

South of Riyadh in Saudi Arabia is a huge artificial ‘farm’ ploughed out of the desert and artificially irrigated by desalinated water. Islamic eschatology tells us that when Saudi turns green, the prophet will return. By this time, of course, the Islamic dream of a universal Caliphate will have been realized.

This exchange took place on the LibertyGB website not so long ago:

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Odd Jobs

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Winter Fundraiser 2014, Day One

Dymphna and I have taken a wide assortment of jobs over the decades, but nothing as unusual as this one.

One of the job requirements for this position is that we strap on our hiking boots once every quarter and set off on a Wanderwoche through a single theme while asking our readers to help keep this blog afloat. This week’s theme, as you can see, is “odd jobs”, and my current occupation is the oddest of them all. I didn’t plan on spending my sunset years as an itinerant Islamophobe. I just kind of fell into it.

Tip jarAs I warned you back in December, we’re going to have to push extra hard during this fundraiser, because our new higher profile has made this blog a more costly enterprise than it was a few months ago. We came under DoS attack at least twice, and lengthy outages forced us to move up to a more robust type of hosting. The new service, plus the attendant technical help on tasks that lie outside my range of skills, have added significantly to the cost of running this enterprise.

They say that when you start taking fire, you’re over the target, so we must be doing something right. It’s difficult to pinpoint which of our recent activities has drawn such unwelcome attention, but it almost certainly must be one or more of the following four:

1. The controversy over Diana West and American Betrayal

Standing up for Diana West not something that I would have expected to draw enemy fire. Yet the conclusions she draws in her book — that the Communist penetration of the Roosevelt administration was more extensive than is generally believed, went all the way to the top, and has deformed the American government to this day — have prompted vigorous, vicious, concentrated resistance. The well-funded effort to silence her suggests that Planet X might also be willing to sponsor cyber-attacks against her defenders. For a time Gates of Vienna was the most prominent venue to push back against Planet X, so it may be that some of our expensive difficulties are due to the position we took on Ms. West’s behalf.

2. Original material by Geert Wilders

Back in November and December we had the privilege of hosting two original pieces by Geert Wilders: his redesign of the Saudi flag, and an open letter to Pope Francis. Each piece generated a “Rosetta Stone” translation initiative, and each caused an unprecedented level of traffic for a week or so after the initial post.

It’s well-known that Geert Wilders is one of the top targets for both the European Left and the Muslim Brotherhood, so it’s conceivable that the outages Gates of Vienna went through back then were at least partially brought on by malicious attacks aimed at Mr. Wilders.

3. The New Year’s Day explosion and fire on Cedar Avenue in Minneapolis

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Gates of Vienna News Feed 2/23/2014

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The Ukrainian parliament has elected a temporary president to fill in for ousted President Viktor Yanukovych, who has fled the capital and whose current whereabouts are unknown. German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Russian President Vladimir Putin agree that Ukraine must remain whole and not be broken up into an eastern (pro-Russian) state and a western (pro-EU) state.

In other news, the descendants of Muslims who were expelled from Spain centuries ago are demanding a “right of return” to the Iberian peninsula like that granted to the descendants of Sephardic Jews expelled in 1492. The number of such Muslims may potentially be in the millions.

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

Thanks to C. Cantoni, Fjordman, Insubria, JD, Jerry Gordon, JP, 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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Self-Imposed Common Sense Apartheid

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As mentioned here a few days ago, a group headed by a well-known “British” Islamic firebrand, Haitham Al-Haddad, has reserved the Legoland theme park in Windsor for a day of culturally enriched fun. The news of the upcoming event has caused controversy in the UK, prompting a lot of discussion in the British media.

The most controversial media piece so far was a satire about the Legoland event by Richard Littlejohn that appeared a few days ago in The Daily Mail. Not everybody got the joke, especially leftist readers and those of the Islamic persuasion.

Our British correspondent JP has written an essay about all the brouhaha over Mr. Littlejohn’s satire.

Self-Imposed Common Sense Apartheid
by JP

“The author, actually provides us with the itinerary for the day, which makes me wonder why this is relevant again to this story?”

— “So all Muslims who visit Legoland are terrorists, according to the Daily Mail”,
The Huffington Post, 20 February 2014

Imran Awan, Deputy Director of the Centre for Applied Criminology at Birmingham City University

Satire: the use of humour, irony, exaggeration, or ridicule to expose and criticize people’s stupidity or vices, particularly in the context of contemporary politics and other topical issues.

Imran Awan’s recent opinion piece in the Huffington Post on Richard Littlejohn’s article ‘Jolly Jihadi Boy’s outing to Legoland’ provides a master class in obduracy and self-imposed common sense apartheid.

Awan appears to be unaware — whether genuine or feigned is not clear – of the concept of satire, and therefore treats as factual what is exaggeration to the point of absurdity. Rather oddly, the response to the satire is itself absurd, as if some sort of comic mirroring process has taken place where Littlejohn and Awan form a misshapen pantomime horse pulling in different directions.

The main feature of the satire is an obviously fake itinerary for the Legoland visit which only the most obtuse could interpret as approaching any version of reality for this particular event, yet Awan takes it as such and questions the reason for its inclusion. Without the itinerary there would have been no article, no satire and no opportunity for religio-political humour. Littlejohn’s job is not to supply sober, fact-based reports. Rather it is to present topics in an entertaining, if skewed manner, and this is what he does, article after article, on a wide variety of themes.

Some recent, and it must be said, entertaining articles include Welcome to Kazistan, the Proud to be British quiz 2013, and Springtime for Merkel.

Question 26 of the Proud to be British quiz 2013 may present difficulties for Awan:

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Salafists Rally in Duisburg

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There was a Salafist demonstration yesterday in the city of Duisburg in North Rhine-Westphalia. The gathering was led by the notorious convert and former professional boxer Pierre Vogel, a.k.a. Abu Hamza. The Salafists attacked counter-demonstrators who came to support the constitution and protest against sharia.

Below is an interview from the scene with Jürgen Grimm, one of the contributors to Gegen Islam (“Against Islam”). Many thanks to our German correspondent Klaus von Twickel for the translation, and to Vlad Tepes for the subtitling:

The following photos and text are from the accompanying post, also translated by Klaus von Twickel:

Sharia Terror in Duisburg City — in front of the train station

250 fascist supporters of Pierre Vogel this Saturday [22 February 2014] occupied the train station forecourt in Duisburg with radical prayer rituals. As on previous occasions, peaceful counter-protestors who carried banners supporting the German constitution and against Sharia law were attacked. On the stage, Pierre Vogel again agitated against democratic values and the rule of law. Among the counter-demonstrators were Krefeld Islam-expert Michael Höhne-Pattberg and a companion:

[Banner in photo reads: Protect our citizens. No Sharia! For the constitution and human rights.]

On account of the dangerous situation, these two gentlemen could only show their courageous commitment against the radical Salafists from a certain distance. All the same, they were repeatedly attacked both verbally and physically to the extent that police had to protect them again and again, and had to remove some of the Salafists from the scene. Because the situation worsened over the course of several hours, police buses brought more uniformed officials, the number of police officers increasing to a three-figured one. Many wore steel helmets for fear of Islamic stone-throwers:

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Gates of Vienna News Feed 2/22/2014

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Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych has fled the presidential palace, and is rumored to holed up in the northeastern part of the country after being prevented from flying to Russia. His rival, former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, addressed a crowd in Kiev after being released from detention. The Ukrainian parliament has voted to remove Mr. Yanukovych’s presidential powers.

In other news, nineteen people were killed and dozens more wounded after gunmen clashed with security forces in Iraq.

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

Thanks to C. Cantoni, Fjordman, Insubria, JD, JP, 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 EC Knows. Why Doesn’t the FBI?

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Most of the research for the following article was conducted by our Minnesota correspondent Henrietta. I am deeply grateful for her assistance, without which the evidence described below would not be detailed here.

On New Year’s Day 2014 a powerful explosion and fire occurred at 514 Cedar Avenue South in Minneapolis, in a predominantly Somali neighborhood of the city.

The building was gutted by the blaze. Two bodies were found in the rubble, and fourteen people were hospitalized, one of whom died later. Within 72 hours, the building had been pulled down into a heap of rubble by a backhoe.

Two days after the blast, before any real investigation occurred — which could never be conducted, anyway, with the potential crime scene destroyed — Greg Boosalis, the supervisory special agent with the FBI in Minneapolis, told the press that there was “no evidence of terrorist activity”.

Ever since that day I have been asking the question: How did the FBI know there was no terrorist activity without examining the scene of the explosion?

The question becomes even more urgent with the with the emergence of the latest wrinkle in the case. According to EUR-Lex , the repository of legal documents for the European Union, the European Commission issued the following regulation back in 2002:

32002R1580

Commission Regulation (EC) No 1580/2002 of 4 September 2002 amending for the second time Council Regulation (EC) No 881/2002 imposing certain specific restrictive measures directed against certain persons and entities associated with Usama bin Laden, the Al-Qaida network and the Taliban, and repealing Council Regulation (EC) No 467/2001

Official Journal L 237 , 05/09/2002 P. 0003 – 0005

Commission Regulation (EC) No 1580/2002

of 4 September 2002

amending for the second time Council Regulation (EC) No 881/2002 imposing certain specific restrictive measures directed against certain persons and entities associated with Usama bin Laden, the Al-Qaida network and the Taliban, and repealing Council Regulation (EC) No 467/2001

Under Article 1, number 2, we read:

Jama, Garad (a.k.a. Nor, Garad K.) (a.k.a. Wasrsame, Fartune Ahmed, 2100, Bloomington Avenue, Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States of America; 1806, Riverside Avenue, 2nd Floor, Minneapolis, Minnesota; date of birth 26 June 1974. [emphasis added]

Why did the European Commission list Garad K. Nor et al. as being associated with Islamic terrorists?

As it happens, the EC was acting on a list drawn up by the United States Treasury the previous year, not long after 9/11. According to UPI:

U.S. Treasury lists terror associates

WASHINGTON, Nov. 7 (UPI) — The White House and U.S. Department of Treasury on Wednesday released additions to the list identifying individuals, organizations and businesses with links to terrorist organizations. Those additions are:

[…]

Garad Jama (a.k.a. Garad K. Nor; a.k.a. Fartune Ahmed Wasrsame) [emphasis added]

For those who have been following the story of the Cedar-Riverside explosion, the name “Garad Nor” may ring a bell.

According to the MN Secretary of State website, Garad Nor is recorded as a “Registered Agent” of Wadani Properties, the company that owned and managed the apartments of the Cedar-Riverside building located at 510 and 512 Cedar Ave South that exploded and burned on January 1. In some reports, Garad Nor himself as listed as the owner.

The offices of Wadani Properties are located at 2200 E Franklin Ave, # 204.

According to the website of the Minnesota Secretary of State, Garad Nor is also the Chief Executive Officer of Dar Al Tawakul General LLC. Dar Al Tawakul General LLC is one of the companies listed in the indictment against the two Rochester citizens found guilty of money laundering for al-Shabaab.

Dar Al Tawakul General LLC is also located at 2200 E Franklin Ave, # 204.

Garad Nor, the owner of the destroyed building on Cedar Avenue South, acknowledged his place on Treasury’s list of interdicted persons and companies. According to an article published in 2012 by The Minneapolis Star-Tribune:

“Nor, who also goes by the name Garad Jama, was in Dubai the day he learned through CNN that his name was listed among 62 individuals and organizations that the U.S. government said had helped fund Osama bin Laden.”

Why might Garad K. Nor have been in Dubai, of all places?

Here’s a possible reason:

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