Below is the latest video from Aldo Sterone, the Algerian-French car pundit who now lives in London.
Many thanks to Oz-Rita for the translation, and to Vlad Tepes for the subtitling:
Transcript:
Monthly Archives: June 2014
Gates of Vienna News Feed 6/22/2014
Facing an imminent threat from the mujahideen of ISIS, Iraqi government troops have fled from three cities in western Iraq. ISIS had just taken a fourth city in the region, and was able to effortless occupy the other three after they were abandoned by security forces.
In other news, Glasgow Central Mosque has been given the go-ahead by city authorities to broadcast the call to prayer every day during the upcoming Commonwealth Games.
To see the headlines and the articles, click “Continue reading” below.
Thanks to C. Cantoni, Fjordman, Insubria, Jerry Gordon, JP, 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.
That Unfortunate First Amendment
The German public broadcaster ZDF evidently thinks that Americans have too much freedom of speech. The issue in question concerns the famous photo of a meeting between Haj Amin al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem. The Grand Mufti and the Führer are currently making a joint appearance in anti-Islamic posters on the sides of buses in Washington D.C. as part of the latest bus-ad campaign sponsored by Pamela Geller.
Our Canadian correspondent Rembrandt Clancy has translated and subtitled ZDF’s news report about this egregious abuse of free speech, and accompanies it with his own introduction.
Introduction
by Rembrandt Clancy
“Enemy of Islam” shocks the ZDF — “Tasteless Opinion Making” is the title given to a posting which appeared on the German Internet portal Politically Incorrect (PI) on 21 June 2014.
The article features a news segment by one of Germany’s public broadcasters, the ZDF (20 June 2014). The theme of the newscast is an attack on Pamela Geller’s bus-banner campaign in Washington D.C., which features the collaboration of the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Amin al-Husseini, with Adolf Hitler in 1941. What is more striking, however, is the broadcaster’s hostility toward freedom of speech generally and the American First Amendment in particular.
In addition, the PI article draws attention to the following points: the ZDF journalists’ personal, verbal attack on Pamela Geller; the broadcaster’s labelling the ads as tasteless without acknowledging their historical veracity; the implication that Islam knows no Jew-hatred; the oblique call for sabotaging the ads; and, by way of the tenor of the newscast, Germans are fortunate to have no such freedom of speech as in America. Finally, the PI author notes a contradiction: the moderator, Ralph Szepanski, begins by suggesting that “hardly anyone” in America seems to care about what would be “unthinkable” in Germany, and even “punishable” there; but at the end, the reporter, Elisabeth Koblitz, informs the viewer that “…the Islam-hater has started a wave of protest rolling on the Internet.”
The video (translated and subtitled by Rembrandt Clancy):
Video Transcript:
Drinking Your Honour’s Noble Health
Summer Fundraiser 2014, Day Seven
As you all know by now, the theme of this week’s fundraiser is “Curators at the Crossroads”, with me doing the curating and Dymphna looking out at our crossroads. I’ve been attempting all week to explain what my job here involves, and have had a tough time of it — it really is difficult to describe.
So I’ll just let it go. Readers who have been around long enough already know what I do, and what Dymphna does, and why we are asking for donations to help us keep going. To those of you who just got here: Stick around! You’ll soon find out.
Since today is the last day of the fundraiser, I’ll spare you one more explanation of what Being Baron Bodissey means, and let Lewis Carroll do the explaining instead.
As Dymphna mentioned last night, I like to read poetry, and the poems of Lewis Carroll (a.k.a. Charles Dodgson) are among my favorites. The following poem from Through the Looking-Glass is variously identified as “Haddocks’ Eyes”, “The Aged Aged Man”, “Ways and Means”, and “A-sitting on a Gate” by the White Knight, who performs it for Alice.
It’s actually a satire of a poem called “Resolution and Independence” by William Wordsworth. Many of Carroll’s best-known verses were satires of poems that were popular during Victorian times, but have since fallen into obscurity. All that we have left is the humorous echo of them, preserved by the genius of Charles Dodgson.
In the following piece, I play the part of the old man on the gate, while you, our loyal readers, get to hector me for an explanation of what I do whilst thumping me on the head.
On the other hand, the role of the White Knight might also suit me — since he keeps hatching absurd schemes in his head so that he can’t pay attention to anything the old man says.
Here we go:
I’ll tell thee everything I can:
There’s little to relate.
I saw an aged aged man,
A-sitting on a gate.
“Who are you, aged man?” I said,
“And how is it you live?”
And his answer trickled through my head,
Like water through a sieve.He said “I look for butterflies
That sleep among the wheat:
I make them into mutton-pies,
And sell them in the street.
I sell them unto men,” he said,
“Who sail on stormy seas;
And that’s the way I get my bread —
A trifle, if you please.”But I was thinking of a plan
To dye one’s whiskers green,
And always use so large a fan
That they could not be seen.
So, having no reply to give
To what the old man said,
I cried “Come, tell me how you live!”
And thumped him on the head.His accents mild took up the tale:
He said “I go my ways,
And when I find a mountain-rill,
I set it in a blaze;
And thence they make a stuff they call
Rowlands’ Macassar-Oil —
Yet twopence-halfpenny is all
They give me for my toil.”But I was thinking of a way
To feed oneself on batter,
And so go on from day to day
Getting a little fatter.
I shook him well from side to side,
Until his face was blue:
“Come, tell me how you live,” I cried,
“And what it is you do!”
Gates of Vienna News Feed 6/21/2014
Eleven public employees in the Sicilian town of Palermo were arrested after they conspired to secretly raise their own salaries. They were charged with embezzlement and various other counts related to their financial shenanigans.
In other news, Muslims in Cardiff are in shock after a fellow “Welshman” — who was allegedly radicalized online — traveled to Syria and then made a jihad recruitment video that was posted on the Internet.
To see the headlines and the articles, click “Continue reading” below.
Thanks to C. Cantoni, Charlie Marteau, 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.
The Evolution of Multicultural Iconography
The title makes this sound like a research paper, doesn’t it? Well, in a way it is — but you won’t see any footnotes or scholarly annotations in it, because I don’t know where I picked up any of these images.
When I search for relevant graphics for a post, I often encounter a lot of interesting and/or appalling unrelated images. Whenever that happens, I save some of the choice tidbits in a folder for possible later use. Over the years I’ve collected several dozen of them.
Sometimes, during a search using particular keywords — examples include “multicultural”, “diversity”, “tolerance”, “inclusive”, “enrich”, and “ethnic” in various combinations — I uncover a vast lode of visual goodthink, a purulent sump of politically correct imagery going on for page after page of search results. At first my mind recoils from so much cloying mendacity, but eventually a sort of sick fascination sets in, and I keep on paging through the saccharine rainbow of Multicultural iconography, just to see what pops up.
Hence this collection. These pictures represent only a tiny sample of what’s out there, just waiting for you to gaze upon them so they can zap your degenerate bourgeois mind into a state of right-thinking rectitude. Try your own image searches using relevant keywords and see what turns up. But be sure to pack a supply of anti-emetics — you’re going to need ’em.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Standard Multicultural imagery functions as a visual shibboleth. Businesses, charities, educational institutions, and all levels of government must display the correct icons of diversity or expect to be cast into cultural outer darkness. The ideological guidelines are fairly rigid at any given moment, but they shift over time. Imagery that was acceptable and even laudable to display in 1960 has become doubleplus ungood, and hence unthinkable here in the second decade of the 21st century.
The first signs of what is now known as Multiculturalism began to appear in the late 1950s and the early 1960s, during the “Think Ethnic” craze that came flooding into the culture under the leadership of beat writers, abstract artists, folk musicians, and other KGB fronts. I remember seeing the earliest versions of those “small world” graphics of ethnic children that have become ubiquitous in the fifty years since. They featured a map or a globe with kids of various ethnicities standing on a representative piece of real estate. The Mexican boy wore a serape and the Japanese girl sported a kimono. The Eskimo kid was standing in front of his igloo holding a harpoon. Alpine types could be identified by their dirndls and lederhosen. In those days — late Eisenhower to early Kennedy — the spear-carrying African with a loincloth and a bone in his nose had already been ruled off the turf. But even so, the images that were commonly used back then would get today’s editors fired or expelled from school if they were so foolish as to publish them.
A more recent version of the costumed “small world” graphic is below:
“Small world”, with costumes
This image is ideologically suspect by the standards of 2014. Notice, for example, the Hawaiian babe person with her lei, her grass skirt, and her little strapless top. If that isn’t the objectification of womyn, I don’t know what is!
To resolve this sort of dilemma, the most recent “small world” pictures tend to drop the costumes entirely, since any given representation could at any moment become verboten as “ethnic stereotyping”. The preferred solution is to dress all the kids in the same shorts-and-tee-shirt kindergarten outfits and indicate their ethnicity by skin and hair color:
“Small world”, no costumes
And here’s a paper-doll version of the same meme. In their holy diversity, they’re all made out of ticky-tacky, and they all look just the same:
Multicultural paper dolls
Now let’s move on to the field of carefully staged photographs. These are widely represented in university publications, government handbooks, and corporate brochures. Every time I walk into our bank, I note the carefully-calibrated Multicultural posters for loans, mortgages, and savings accounts, each coded to appeal to the perceived demographics of the bank’s customers whilst toeing the Multicultural party line.
Here’s a collection of gospoda of all ages, gathered together to celebrate their unity-in-diversity with a reassuringly cheery bonhomie:
Multicultural citizens of all ages
And here’s a slightly different group, clearly a workplace assortment with a demographic center of gravity somewhere in the Millennial generation:
Multicultural group of office workers, mostly young
In all of the above examples, one aspect of diversity is noticeably absent: the hijab. Whenever the Arab ethnicity appears, it is represented by a burnoose and a jalabiya on a male representative of the culture. Other varieties of Muslim dress may include the dashiki, the turban, the fez, etc. — but only males are depicted.
That’s a non-inclusive situation, and is quite sexist when you think about it. But it’s now beginning to change. Although the idealized workplace groups are still without the veil, as far as I can tell, the school groups are another matter.
The particular genre of Multicultural iconography represented below is an arrangement I’ve dubbed the “head wheel”. It typically includes groups of grade school, high school, or college students lying on the ground like spokes of a wheel with their heads at the center:
Multicultural head wheel, no hijabs
Notice the more recent evolution of the head wheel as represented in this photo:
License For Me, Sharia For Thee!
Vlad Tepes has a few choice words to say about the degraded state of justice in the Islamic Emirate of Britain:
A few more data points. England, justice and islam
I posted an article yesterday with a story about a couple of people who baconated a mosque and got a year in jail for their efforts even though the only damage done was one offended janitor. And as he was a muslim, we can never know exactly how offended he really was as they just don’t make instruments that sensitive at the current state of technology. (Look for a new iPhone app and sensor coming out with the iPhone 9)
Since I wrote that article a few more data points have come in. I thought it would be a worthy public service to anyone who is considering visiting the newly minted sharia state of Anglostan to let them know what they can actually expect from the judicial system, rather than what they might fondly remember as the former basis of the British judicial system, clearly no longer in effect. It is my deep hope that the good folks at Liberty GB will actually embark on a proper study of comparative sentencing, as this is more than a matter of curiosity, it is a matter of central dogma of the state itself. But until they do, and until they publish their results, here are a few interesting cases from memory and with the help of Liberty GB’s Tim Burton.
1. Muslim girls kick the crap out of a white British girl calling her racist epithets such as “White slag” and worse, are let go scot free by a judge who determined that because in theory muslims aren’t supposed to drink, that these girls therefore must not be used to drinking, and therefore this behaviour was the consequence of drinking while muslim. Or something very much to that effect. 2. This link is a kind of analysis of this issue as well, but details several very similar ‘crimes’ and punishments depending on the religion of the perpetrator. It is worth popping over and having a look. Below, the immediately relevant bit however:
A Fork in the Road
Summer Fundraiser 2014, Day Six
This fundraiser began with my part being to examine the crossroads we’ve come to, whilst the Baron chose to explain his curator role as the webmaster and coordinator of others’ work. Including mine.
As you know if you’ve been following these money-raising posts, I’ve spent my time on stage (when I wasn’t distracted down other paths) fretting about our finances, which have become rather anemic over time. There is no way I’m ever going to be able to work again. The Baron could get a job locally, but I’d rather he stay chained to his Gates of Vienna desk if at all possible. After ten years’ work, I don’t want to see this endeavor fail just because of a lack of funding.
We aren’t wealthy. A house, a little savings, and our passion to conserve what is good about this country, to delineate what is worth saving here and in Europe. A small host of donors who have faithfully seen us through these lean years and given us a cushion from quarter to quarter.
The Baron’s brain is formidable. One of those rare ones that is equally at home in Math and the Sciences as it is in painting pictures or writing poetry. He’s never been adept at making money, though he certainly never set out to be poor. He just never planned to be rich or secure… it’s not in his character. What a fortunate thing it is he has no vices since he couldn’t begin to indulge them.
What he has always contemplated was how to find ways to accomplish his passion — in his case, in the prime of his life, it was painting. That path closed at the same time it was necessary to send his son to college and voilà, serendipity gave him the opportunity in the form a good friend’s offer of a job. When the door to full-time work closed, we both decided to stay with what we had “accidentally” founded: Gates of Vienna. While we worked toward a more firmly established Counterjihad, we hoped economic times would improve the Baron’s chances of working at least part time in his professional field in order to prop open those Gates. For a long time, those odd jobs did keep coming and, to me, that was an indication we were on the right track. But now those small contracts are also gone as companies cut back to the bone, trying to survive themselves.
Thus this crossroads, which during the course of our current fundraiser has morphed into a fork in the road (or the railroad, considering the image the Baron found for this post). In other words, we’re going to keep on keeping on as long as we can.
Wiser people would probably hang it up, but I know the Baron — as long as he draws breath he will be passionately pushing back against the dissolution and disappearance of Western culture. He also has a son he’s taught well, a grown man now who has also drawn deeply from those same traditions and principles and works in his own way to keep that candle burning.
We all think and believe it’s worth the candle, passionately so. With the Baron’s more deeply grounded knowledge, he leads and we follow. Though in some areas he defers to me — not often! Sometimes I think it can be a burden to know so much about our history since one also is forced to carry a painful awareness of what will disappear without vigilance. If it were simply one age replacing another? Well, that’s merely the flow of life. Bittersweet, but necessary to make way for the next generation.
But that’s not the case now. Between the Islamic love of supremacy and death, combined with their hatred of joy, and the Marxists’ compulsion to diminish individual freedoms in the name of some harshly regimented utopian statelessness, we lovers of all that is Western culture are fighting a rearguard action. But fight we will, not only for life — that ends eventually for us all — but for the preservation of generation upon generation of accumulated knowledge, and especially the freedom to continue to seek that triumvirate of Truth, Goodness and Beauty. There can be no more important task at the moment. At least not for us.
Gates of Vienna News Feed 6/20/2014
A 39-year-old man and an 18-year-old woman were sentenced to prison terms of nine months and twelve months respectively for putting bacon inside Edinburgh’s central mosque. The court determined that putting bacon on the door handles and throwing it inside was a form of desecration.
In other news, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani has withdrawn his support for Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and called for a new government.
To see the headlines and the articles, click “Continue reading” below.
Thanks to C. Cantoni, Caroline Glick, Egghead, Fjordman, Insubria, Jerry Gordon, JP, 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.
Obama’s Left Hand Doesn’t Speak to His Right Hand
UPDATE: June 21st
This deserves to be seen more widely than it would be if I were to simply leave it in a comment.
The Conservative Housewife found the data on a government website where they were advertising for child escorts in January. In other words, this was a plan, man. A big one requiring lots of personnel:
On January 29, 2014, the Federal Government posted an ad on their BizOpps website [see their link at her page] seeking escorts for unaccompanied illegal alien children. If this doesn’t prove that the entire mess with all the illegals flooding our country was planned by this administration, nothing ever will. Here is the entire document that lays out the “requirements” to become such an escort
[…]
There is much more damning evidence at her page. This was an ICE op, and they specify the type of people they’ll need to accompany these UACs.
Since it’s a screen cap, the lower resolution on my notebook isn’t entirely clear. You may have no trouble reading this alarming jobs description. Makes you wonder how many people they hired and how long those folks will be employed. Jobs are hard to come by; who would feel pushed to the wall enough to do this kind of work?
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
What if Barack Obama wasn’t inept at all? What if his many failures and misdirections were part of a larger scheme to confuse, misdirect, and eventually destroy our ability to make any reasonable predictions about what comes next?
On the other hand, what if his utter hubris has engineered so vast a mistake that his bridge collapses?
[Update: Below is a video of one woman speaking out at the meeting in Lawrenceville. Many thanks to the anonymous commenters who provided these links. Open up YouTube and look at the sidebar for more Lawrenceville videos.]
I can only deal with a few parts of this administration’s huge and sprawling Hell House. So I will stick to some of what I know well, and hazard a few guesses as to what is going on.
Take the “humanitarian” crisis he has fomented along our southern borders. It appears that advertisements or news reports ran in Central American news media; they claimed new opportunities for illegal alien children IF they came to the U.S. border unaccompanied by adult members of their family. New, softer rules would apply for these children; they would be more kindly treated if they were to arrive in huge droves, serving to undermine the strictures in place.
What if those “news” stories served to turn on a spigot? What if families with no hope for the future sent their malnourished and diseased children (not to mention adults who’d been miniaturized by a life of semi-starvation who tried to “pass” as children) on a fearsome odyssey, including a trek through Mexico? What if they appeared in the thousands to overwhelm those whose job it was to keep the borders secure?
What if the obedient American media began this part of their news cycle with horrendous images of the children who’d been hauled off in conveniently waiting buses to holding pens in Arizona, etc. And what if those images were designed to soften the already predictably soft American hearts, causing a tsunami of demands to “take care of the children”?
What if those softened-up Americans demanded a one-time permission to permit those poor parents to come here to be reunited with their children and then to return home with them?
What if somehow these families of unknown numbers got lost in the paperwork? We know how skilled the Obama mis-administration is at ‘losing’ things (Lois Lerner’s IRS hard drive comes to mind here).
A whole mess of conditional thinking went into this Operation Child-Scam. Let’s look at a few instances of how things went down and what may happen as a result.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
What could go wrong with that series of events outlined above?
For one thing, we have a whole host of unknown knowns, beginning with the actual number of “children” involved. Thirty thousand ? Sixty thousand? Maybe ninety thousand by year’s end? No one really knows; I’ve seen 147,000 conjectured. But the numbers of children are not the point. The seeming goal was to be reunification of these children with their parents. The children wouldn’t be driven or flown home for their reunification. These heart-warming scenarios would take place on American terra firma. Close up, tearful reunion, then fade to… lost paperwork, disappeared families, a new swell of third-world immigrants, and by some magic wand waving them through the voting booth, all voting the Democrat ticket.
This Marxist strategy designed to overwhelm and break the system should have worked. It certainly achieved its purpose in our domestic War on Poverty whereby the black family was sundered and those who managed to vote after their secure benefits were in place always voted Democrat. Lyndon Johnson told them they’d be safe in the arms of Uncle Sam, safe from the predations of white folk.
So what went wrong here? That’s not a rhetorical question. I’m puzzled by the shifting sands I see under Obama’s feet. Are Americans sick of his shtick? Are they tired and discouraged after the fleecing they’ve experienced? But Obama talks; he doesn’t listen. And all the polls displaying our disfavor mean diddly-squat.
Money talks, however. What are the deep-pocket crony capitalists telling him now? The Baron has pointed out an unholy alliance: the Dems want immigrants for their voting base; the Republicans want the cheap labor. That’s the reason you see them coming together on immigration “reform”. Both sides need droves of warm bodies. They want them here all legal-like, or at least legal enough not to have to harden the border.
What follows are my best guesses but only God and his funders know what Obama has in mind. Like everyone else, I’ve made some deductions whilst firmly gripping Occam’s Razor to trim away the fuzzy bunny disguise Obama is wont to wear during his forays into the public realm.
Initially I thought BHO had seen the light — i.e., the red, buzzing light that begins sounding when a pol’s approval rating dips into the danger zone. But the Baron reminded me that this is a lame duck who doesn’t need approval, never has. Whatever it is, some large thing has gotten his attention. Something large enough to make him back away. Whatever it is, he is letting us see at least part of it. Don’t forget: nothing emerges into public view from our Kremlin unless it is authorized.
[That’s why there are no more White House photos except those taken by his own photographer and approved prior to dissemination.]
But wait! Hark! Do you hear what I hear? President Obama is on the phone with the President of Mexico (the tortured land through which those children had to pass, experiencing God-only-knows-what horrors). Obama The Slithery is telling Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto a tall tale about how the U.S. and Mexico should “work together” to send the children back to their families. As if he hadn’t talked previously to someone or other in the Mexican government to allow these children more-or-less safe passage north to our border.
SAY WHAT??!!? These kids are going BACK?? Since when? Why the sudden change?
The Pope at the “Apartheid Wall”
Ashraf Ramelah’s latest essay concerns Pope Francis’ visit to Israel, connecting it with the recent elections in Egypt and the EU.
The Pope, the Field Marshall, and the EU “earthquake”: Standing or succumbing to Islamist pressures?
by Ashraf Ramelah
Many do not think of the Vatican as an independent, sovereign city-state with its own diplomatic envoy, Secretariat of State and embassies around the world. Most think of it as the home of the beloved Pope and the headquarters of the Catholic hierarchy. The Catholic Pope, both spiritual leader and head of a tiny kingdom in the center of Rome, is the only absolute monarch in Europe — exercising legislative, executive, and judicial power over the state.
So when the Vatican spokesperson announced in advance of the Pope’s trip to the Holy Land this past month that his visit would be a spiritual journey in response to an invitation from the Patriarch of Jerusalem, the Vatican meant that the Pope’s visit would not be political. But the Vatican did not anticipate the Pope’s unplanned stop at Israel’s security barrier — a wall built by Israel 10 years ago to protect Israeli citizens from Arab-Palestinian suicide bombers — en route to Jerusalem.
Pope Francis stopped at two walls. Before visiting the Western Wall religious site he made an unexpected stop at Israel’s security wall. The controversial separation fence between Israel and Bethlehem has aided Israel in saving lives while being labeled the “apartheid fence” by pro-Palestinian voices. One photo circulating in the aftermath of the Pope’s visit to the security wall shows him making the sign of the cross to begin prayer. Next to him is giant, red-lettered graffiti, “Free Palestine,” next to bold black letters, “Apartheid wall” — the latter, ironically an accusation against Israel’s multicultural democracy. Did Pope Francis realize how his association with Palestinian rhetoric would appear in pictures published for his admirers around the world, and what it could mean?
The Pope’s sudden visit to the concrete barrier was atypical of a spiritual pilgrimage where the heart of Christianity awaited him at notable biblical landmarks. For the Pope to pray anywhere in public other than holy sites or sanctuaries would be considered unusual. And for what purpose? We can only guess. Leaving Hamas-held Bethlehem, the Pope paused in silence as he pressed his face and hands against a wall detested by Muslims around the world. He linked his own image to powerful Palestinian rhetoric. Photos around the world show him standing alongside “Bethlehem looks like a Warsaw Ghetto.” Such sentiments reverberate across the world to equate Israel with Nazism and Palestinians with Polish Jews. If we didn’t think differently of him, we would suspect that the Pope’s visit to this wall was a special gift for Palestinian Authority head, Mahmoud Abbas.
Another snapshot connects the Pope’s image with a forlorn child holding a Palestinian flag. The Pope is silent. The viewer needs to read his mind. He says nothing because his journey is spiritual not political. The images remain and foster speculation. Is the Pope’s ambiguity sending a political message for the Vatican after all? And coupled with the Vatican’s planned agenda for the Pope’s visit to the Holy Land that entailed a first stop in Amman, Jordan, then Hamas-held Bethlehem and finally Jerusalem (the origin of his invitation), one might get the distinct idea that the Pope’s trip represented from the outset the opposite of the Vatican’s announcement.
Project Management
Summer Fundraiser 2014, Day Five
As most of you already know, we’re in the middle of this quarter’s fundraising week. For new readers: this is what we have to do to keep this blog going, in order to avoid taking on annoying advertisements on our sidebar. At least they’re annoying to me, but a number of our readers don’t seem to mind them so much. Which is fortunate, because we may end up having to put them up here after all, depending on how this week (and the following quarter) goes.
But that’s Dymphna’s job. She’s going to look into the ad possibilities while I avoid the whole topic, due to of the fear and loathing I experience when I consider web advertising.
My job, in contrast, is to discuss what it is that we do that we’re asking you to contribute money to help maintain. When I contemplate how to do that, my mind balks, because it’s so difficult to explain.
I wish I could do more writing, but I end up spending most of my time editing texts, communicating, and engaged in project management. A case in point: I’d been trying to write “The Jihad You Can’t See” for five days — I really wanted to — but more urgent matters kept intervening, including this fundraiser. There are a lot of things to do.
What you see posted here (and at other blogs in our neighborhood, such as Vlad, Tundra Tabloids, Snaphanen, and a number of others) is just the published result of what we do. But a lot of other less visible work goes on constantly behind the scenes.
The nature of this enterprise — the necessary work of a decentralized distributed Counterjihad network — means that most projects are parceled out among various people with differing skills. The role of “project manager” is constantly being passed around, depending on the nature of the job to be done. If video production is the main task, then Vlad Tepes or Henrik Ræder Clausen may well be in charge. If a polemical treatise (or even a research paper) needs to be written, I might end up managing it. If a meeting or public conference needs to be organized, Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff is likely to be the brains behind it.
When any given project is complex enough, the responsibility for project management usually shifts from one person to another, depending on which particular skill is called for. Last year’s OSCE conference in Warsaw may well be the best example of what I’m describing. If you’re not familiar with what happens at OSCE events, see the OSCE Archives.
Gates of Vienna News Feed 6/19/2014
The Iraqi government says that its forces have retaken control of the Baiji oil refinery, which had been overrun by the jihadis of ISIS. However, workers inside the installation who were contacted by the media say that ISIS gunmen are still there, and that fighting continues.
In other news, a man in an apartment complex in Texas was told to take down an American flag from his balcony, because it might make his Muslim neighbors feel threatened.
To see the headlines and the articles, click “Continue reading” below.
Thanks to C. Cantoni, Fjordman, Insubria, JP, KGS, Srdja Trifkovic, 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.
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The Jihad You Can’t See
“The Vanishing Private” is a classic Donald Duck cartoon from World War Two. Take a look at an example of what Walt Disney could do back in the days when his company made real cartoons:
For those who prefer not to watch it, here’s a synopsis:
Pvt. Donald Duck is supposed to be painting an artillery piece with camouflage paint. After being dressed down by the Sarge for doing it wrong, Donald looks for better paint. He discovers a bucket of “invisible” paint in a top secret experimental facility, and uses it to paint the gun, which then becomes invisible. During later antics, Donald is propelled into the bucket of paint, and becomes invisible himself.
There follows a series of predictable gags, in which the Sarge chases Donald, who can only be detected by his footprints, splashes in water, his movement through a field of flowers, etc. The climax of the piece comes when the Sarge, carrying bunches of pink posies with a sheepish look on his face (you really have to see the cartoon to get the gag), encounters the General. After that the Sarge comes to grief, and as the story ends he is locked in a cell wearing a straitjacket, with Donald doing guard duty over him.
For the past week or so, whenever I read about ISIS and the jihad in Syria and Iraq, it makes me think of this cartoon.
There are two lines to keep in mind. First, when the Sarge bellows at Donald:
“You’ve got to paint it so you can’t see it!”
And later, when Sarge encounters a very puzzled General, he asks plaintively: