Geert Wilders in Vienna, Part 3: How Do We Defend Freedom and Democracy?

Yesterday evening Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff interviewed Geert Wilders, the leader of the PVV in the Netherlands, at the Hotel Sacher in Vienna.

She posed three questions:

1.   In your view, what is the most urgent threat we face here in Europe?
2.   How should we handle Islamic State, and its supporters here in Europe?
3.   What is the most useful a normal citizen can do to protect freedom, democracy and women’s rights?
 

Below is a video of Mr. Wilders’ responses. Note: when Mr. Wilders mentions “Schengen”, he is referring to the agreement signed by 26 European countries (not all of them in the EU) that allows the free movement of people within what is known as the Schengen Area.

Many thanks to Henrik Ræder Clausen for recording the interview, and to Vlad Tepes for editing and uploading the video:

Previously:

Geert Wilders in Vienna, Part 2

Geert Wilders, the leader of the Party for Freedom (Partij voor de Vrijheid, PVV) in the Netherlands paid a visit to Vienna yesterday to meet with Heinz-Christian Strache, his counterpart in the Austrian Freedom Party (Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs, FPÖ). Mr. Wilders delivered a speech at the Hofburg Palace, the former imperial palace of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, to a full house of more than a thousand people. A press conference before the speech was held in the Austrian parliament.

Below is the English translation of the prepared text for the speech given by Mr. Wilders. The original German version is below the jump.

Meine lieben Freunde:
Servus in Wien!

I am extremely happy to be here, in the Hofburg, together with more than one thousand proud Austrian patriots.
It is a pleasure to visit Heinz-Christian and my friends of the FPÖ again.
It is an honor to be in this beautiful city.

All over the world Vienna is the symbol of resistance against Islam.
It is here that the Islamic invasion of the West was stopped in 1683.
Islam was defeated at the gates of Vienna.

You and I are standing here today inside these gates.
In the city that Islam was unable to conquer.
And today we have a clear message for Islam again.
The same message that King John Sobieski had when he rushed to Vienna in 1683 to help defend it against the Turks: You will not be able to overwhelm Vienna or the West. Because we will not allow it.

Before I continue, let me tell you something about my life as a Dutch politician.
I am not a President, nor a Chancellor, nor even a member of Cabinet, just a simple member of Parliament.
However, for more than ten years now, I have been living under 24/7 police protection. I lived with my wife in army barracks, prison cells and safe houses until this very day, just to be safe.
Wherever I go, armed policemen accompany me to protect me against Islamic jihadis. I am on the death list of Al Qaida. Islamic terror groups want to kill me because I tell the truth about Islam and speak out against the Islamization of our free Western societies.

In the Netherlands as in other European countries we have made a terrible mistake. Our politicians have foolishly allowed millions of Islamic immigrants to settle within our borders.
Everywhere the Islamic culture was welcomed as an enrichment.
Nowhere the demand was made that the immigrants assimilate.

Not a single European leader had the guts to state the obvious and tell the truth: our Western culture based on Christianity, Judaism and Humanism, is far superior to the Islamic culture and immigrants have to adopt our values, not the other way around.
And now, we in Europe are paying the price for this folly. The Islamic culture is eating away our own Judeo-Christian and humanist civilization and replacing it with intolerance, hatred and violence.

The year is still young, but we have already had murderous terror attacks in Paris and in Copenhagen, we had jihadists shooting police with Kalashnikovs in Belgium, we had the Islamic State slaughtering people in Syria, Iraq, Libya and Nigeria.
Last Autumn, we had deadly terrorist attacks in Australia and Canada.
With every new terrorist crime, with every new attack, with every new beheading, it becomes clear to ever more people what the true nature is of the threat we are facing.

As you can see, Islam is on the move again.
It is also marching on Europe again.
Most of our politicians look away.
But we will not look on motionless.

We will speak out.
We will not be silent.
Because we love our country.
Because we love our freedom.
Because we refuse to live in slavery.
Because we believe that without liberty, life is not worth living.
Liberty and human dignity, that is what we stand for.

We are the torchbearers for freedom.
We are the torchbearers for democracy.
We are the torchbearers for a civilization that is far superior to any other civilization on earth.

Last Summer, my home town, The Hague, witnessed scenes which brought back memories of the darkest period in our history, the Nazi era.
Sympathizers of the Islamic State paraded in our streets. They carried swastikas, they carried the black flags of ISIS. They shouted “Death to the Jews.”
Instead of rounding up these hatemongers, the authorities did nothing.

When we warn against Islam, the authorities call it hate speech and bring us to court. But when the grim forces of hatred march down our streets, the police look on and do not interfere. It is a disgrace. It is a scandal. It is intolerable.

The Islamic State is waging a war against the free West. So are other Islamic terrorists.
Indeed, we are at war. Only fools can deny it. They have declared war on us.

The Islamic ideology is an ideology of war and hatred. It calls on people to be violent. It calls on people to be terrorists. The Koran leaves no doubt about it.

To all those who say that Islam is peace I say: listen to what the Koran has to say.
It is full of verses such as Sura 4:89: “Seize them and kill them wherever ye find them.”
Or Sura 47:4: “When ye meet the unbelievers, smite at their necks and cause a bloodbath among them.”
I could go on and on and on.
There are over 150 verses in the Koran calling for jihad or holy war.

Islam cannot be reformed. For the simple reason that we cannot separate Islam from the Koran and neither can we take Muhammad out of Islam. So, there can never be a moderate Islam.
But of course, there are many moderate and kind Muslims. I know that. I have travelled the Islamic world extensively when I still could do so.
I have visited Turkey, Egypt, Tunisia, Syria, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Indonesia. I have met many kind, friendly and hospitable people there.
But this does not blind me to very important reality that while many Muslims are moderates, Islam itself is not moderate.

A few years ago, I called on Muslims to liberate themselves from the yoke of Islam, to choose for freedom. I wholeheartedly support Muslims who love freedom. So, I told them; “Free yourselves. Leave Islam.” I still stand by this appeal. But this does not blind me to the equally important reality that while many Muslims are moderates, a very large number are not.

The University of Amsterdam did a study about the 1 million Muslims in my country. It found that 11% is prepared to use violence for the sake of Islam. That is a staggering 100,000 people in a small country such as the Netherlands!
A survey last November among Turkish youths in the Netherlands found that 80% do not consider the violence which groups such as ISIS use against non-believers to be wrong. 73% of the Muslims in my country say that Dutch Muslims who go and fight in Syria are heroes.
In December 2013, a study of the Humboldt University in Berlin among Muslims in six European countries found that almost two thirds of the Muslims in Austria are of the opinion that Jews cannot be trusted. Two thirds! This is appalling. This is intolerable. There should be no place for anti-Semitism and ideological violence in civilized countries. We should not tolerate the intolerable.

For the sake of our own safety, for the sake of our own children’s future, we must stop all immigration from Islamic countries. And we have to do it now!

Let us admit it.
During the past four decades, we Europeans have foolishly allowed Islamic mass immigration into Western Europe. This is one of the biggest mistakes we have ever made in our entire history.

Fifty years ago the Netherlands had one thousand immigrants from Islamic countries. Today we have one million. Muhammad is now the second most popular name among newborn boys nationwide and the most popular name in major cities such as Amsterdam, Rotterdam and The Hague. This is also the case in the Belgian capital Brussels, the Norwegian capital Oslo, the British capital London and as a matter of fact even in the whole of Great-Britain.

Last year, the number of asylum seekers in the European Union rose to a record 626,000. A rise of 44% according to Eurostat. Almost two thirds of these asylum seekers came from Islamic countries.
Earlier this month, Frontex, the EU’s external border agency, warned that at this very moment between half a million and one million migrants are ready to leave Libya and cross into Europe. ISIS threatens that it will send terrorists among them. We are facing a catastrophe.

Hence, our conclusion is crystal clear:
Our borders are what defines us. Our borders are what protects us. But the EU and Schengen has abolished all our internal borders, while the EU’s external borders are as leaky as a sieve.
That is why my party, the Party for Freedom, says:
We want to leave Schengen and re-establish our own national border controls.
Fugitives from Syria and other war-torn areas should be safe, but accommodated in their own region. Not here. Not in Europe.
The immensely rich Gulf states do virtually nothing for Syrian fugitives. Qatar has allowed a mere 46 of them, while over 122,000 asked for asylum in Europe last year. This is totally unacceptable.

I have founded the Party for Freedom because I am sick and tired of politicians who bury their heads in the sand like ostriches and hope for a reformed moderate Islam that will suddenly establish itself before the end of the year.
I am sick and tired of their shameless irresponsibility and their despicable cowardice.

I have founded the Party for Freedom to say the things which other parties are afraid to say: no more mosques, no more immigration from Islamic countries, let them adopt our values or stay away, say no to the mullahs and the imams, and get rid of cultural relativism!

I can assure you of one thing: people need to hear the truth about Islam. And I will shout it from the roof tops. Even if the jihadis do not like it. Even if our appeasing politicians do not like it.
Five years ago, I was taken to court on hate crime charges. Fortunately, I was acquitted on all charges. You may have heard, however, that I will soon be brought to court again. The Dutch authorities do not see Islam as a problem; they see me as the problem. They want to silence me. But they will never succeed.

In the past years, I have been travelling the world. I have been to several European countries, to Israel, to the United States, to Canada and Australia, to encourage people to stand up against Islam. But more needs to be done.

And I also need your help.

The resistance against Islamization, mass immigration, lying media and hostile EU elites cannot be left to politicians alone. Preserving our liberties is a responsibility for every citizen.
Everyone of you must raise the awareness of your fellow citizens wherever he or she can.
Austria cannot be warned enough about Islam.
Islam is on the move again. Time is running out for the West. We must not be paralyzed by fear into inaction. We must act.
Everyone of you must sound the alarm bells for Austria.
If you love Austria, sound the alarm.
If you love freedom, sound the alarm.
If you love your wife or husband, sound the alarm.
If you love your children, sound the alarm.
Warn your neighbors, warn your colleagues, warn your friends about the dangers that Islamization poses to their country, their freedom, their partner, their children.

There are still far too many good people out there who do not realize yet how dangerous the situation is. They are lulled to sleep by the media and the political and intellectual establishment.
We must wake them up and open their eyes to the reality that Islamic savagery has settled in our countries.

Austria, the Netherlands, the whole of Europe, but also Western nations such as Canada, the US, Australia, they are all being confronted with primitive brutalities, such as honor killings. We had never seen these brutal practices in our lands since the dark days of paganism, a dozen centuries ago. Now there are back. Islam has brought them back.
Horrible atrocities, such as female genital mutilation, which we had never ever before seen in our entire European history. Now they are here. Islam has brought them here.

We are experiencing that the stronger the Islamic culture in our society becomes the less civilized it is.
Certain parts of our inner cities no longer look European. They look like suburbs of Cairo, Rabat, Algiers, Damascus or Mecca. We are confronted with halal food, headscarves, burkas and polygamy.
We see women being treated like inferior beings, because according to the Koran a woman is only worth half a man.
We see homosexuals and Jews being attacked, because Islam says they deserve to be killed.
We see the total lack of freedom for people who want to leave Islam. They are treated as renegades. The penalty for apostates is death. We should protect these heroes.
We see the threat of violence and terrorism rising, while authorities refuse to tell people that the cause of all this misery is Islam.
We see thousands of homegrown European jihadis waging war in the Middle East. We see them returning because our borders are open and unprotected. We see them plotting attacks on European soil.

Barbarism is back in Europe. We can never accept that.
I say: Let us reclaim our freedoms.
Let us restore our liberties, such as freedom of speech.
Let us defend our culture. Let us protect our people.
Let us make our nations free and safe again.
Let us be brave.
That is what we must do; that is our duty.

Let me ask you: Do our authorities actually do this?
They do not.
They fail to do their duty.
They fail to act accordingly.
They even lie to us.

Every day, we hear Western leaders repeat the sickening mantra that Islam is a religion of peace.
Whenever an atrocity is committed in the name of Islam, Barack Obama, David Cameron, Angela Merkel, my own Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte and many of their colleagues rush to the television cameras to tell the world that it has nothing whatsoever to do with Islam. How stupid do they think we are?!

As you can see, there is an enormous task ahead of us. But, fortunately, we are not alone. We are many. In every country in the West, brave patriots are on our side.
That is why I am optimistic.

We in the Netherlands, you in Austria, all the patriots in the other countries, we stand together. And we support each other, just as it was a Polish King who came to the rescue of Vienna in 1683.

Our political leaders may fail us. But we, my friends, we will not fail.
There is a path we shall never choose, and that is the path of submission.
This is why we say: Yes to freedom! No to tyranny!

If we shrink away from our responsibility, our children will perish and we will live the rest of our lives in shame. It is not enough to fight ISIS in Syria and Iraq; we must stop Islam from spreading here, in our own land. The less Islam, the better. It is a simple as that.

We must also stand with Israel. It is the stronghold of our civilization in the Middle East.
It is a beacon of light in an area of total darkness. Israel is fighting our fight. We should all support it because Islam’s so-called “holy war” against Israel is a war against all of us.
If Israel cannot exist in peace, none of us can.

In 1683, brave men rallied to defend liberty, honor and dignity.
Today we must do the same. From Austria to the Netherlands, from Israel to Australia, from Canada and the U.S. to all the nations of Europe, we must stand fast and refuse to be defeated.
We must protect the gates of Vienna, the gates of Jerusalem, Amsterdam, Rome, London, Sydney and every free city and town in the world. So that they remain free forever!

The policies that we stand for are getting more popular than ever.
We want to stop all immigration from Islamic countries.
We want to stimulate voluntary re-emigration to Islamic countries.
We want to expel all criminals with dual citizenship and deprive them of our nationality.
And all jihadis who want to leave, let them leave. But let them never return. Therefore, we must leave Schengen and reinstate border controls.

Dear Friends, there is a lot of work to do. We, the defenders of freedom and security, have an historic duty.
Our generation has been entrusted with a huge task: to keep the flame of liberty burning and oppose the Islamization of our societies.
I say it without exaggeration: the future of human civilization depends on us. Now is a time when everyone in the West must do his duty.
We are writing history here.
So, let us do our duty.
Let us stand with a strong spirit.
Let us go forth with courage and save freedom!

Indeed, my friends,
John Sobieski is not dead.
He lives on in us. In you. In me.
We can feel his heart beat in our own breast.
And with him and the heroes of 1683 we say:
We will defend the gates of Vienna.
We will defend our borders.
We will defend liberty.

Long live Austria!
Long live the Netherlands!
Long live the West!
Thank you.

The video of the press conference is here.

Original German text:

Continue reading

Gates of Vienna News Feed 3/27/2015

The top story of the day is still the crash of Germanwings Flight 9525 in the Alps. Andreas Lubitz’ ex-girlfriend has now talked to the press about the kamikaze copilot’s preoccupation with doing something that would make everyone remember him. He reportedly hid his illness from his employer, and tore up a “sick note” from his doctor on the day of the deadly crash.

In other news, in the face of the growing Iranian threat, Saudi Arabia says that it will not rule out acquiring nuclear weapons.

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

Thanks to Caroline Glick, Fjordman, Insubria, JD, Srdja Trifkovic, Upananda Brahmachari, Vlad Tepes, and all the other tipsters who sent these in.

Notice to tipsters: Please don’t submit extensive excerpts from articles that have been posted behind a subscription firewall, or are otherwise under copyright protection.

Caveat: Articles in the news feed are posted “as is”. Gates of Vienna cannot vouch for the authenticity or accuracy of the contents of any individual item posted here. We check each entry to make sure it is relatively interesting, not patently offensive, and at least superficially plausible. The link to the original is included with each item’s title. Further research and verification are left to the reader.

Continue reading

Geert Wilders in Vienna, Part 1

Geert Wilders, the leader of the Party for Freedom (Partij voor de Vrijheid, PVV) in the Netherlands paid a visit to Vienna today to meet with Heinz-Christian Strache, his counterpart in the Austrian Freedom Party (Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs, FPÖ).

The following video shows the English-language portions of an introductory press conference that was held by Mr. Strache and Mr. Wilders in the Austrian parliament before Mr. Wilders gave a speech in the Hofburg.

Many thanks to Vlad Tepes for uploading this video:

Photo and video credit: Henrik Ræder Clausen.

Ethno-Religious Diversity and the Limits of Democracy, Part Two

The following essay by El Inglés is the second in a six-part series that examines the sociopolitical effects of mass immigration into the Western democracies.

Ethno-Religious Diversity and the Limits of Democracy

by El Ingles

Part Two: Political Diversity and Ethnic Diversity

The first post in this series introduced a statistical analysis of political systems that includes various terms referenced by abbreviations in later parts of the text. For the reader’s convenience, a list of those abbreviations and their meanings is below:

Abbr   Term   Explanation
PP   Policy Point   Policies actually being implemented by a government at any point in time
IPP   Individual Policy Point   Policies preferred by an individual
DI   Discontentedness Index   Distance between the PP and an IPP
MDI   Mean Discontentedness Index   Average of the DIs of individuals in the population
TD   Threshold Discontentedness   The level of DI above which an individual considers the government illegitimate
CZ   Contented Zone   The interior of a circle having a radius of the value of TD
DZ   Discontented Zone   The area outside the CZ circle
DZF   Discontented Zone Fraction   The fraction of the population occupying the DZ
 

See Part One for a more detailed explanation.

More System Diagrams and Their Implications

Now that we have introduced the two concepts most crucial to our analysis, the MDI and the DZF, let us consider some more system diagrams. We will stipulate here that each of our systems, unless stated otherwise, consists of one million individuals, who will be represented by forty IPPs, each of which corresponds to twenty-five thousand individuals whose political positions are so close to each other as to be, for our purposes, identical. This seems like a reasonable way of representing large numbers of people without overburdening our system diagrams with outlandish numbers of points. Our introductory explanation of system diagrams out of the way, we will henceforth present them with crosses for PPs and larger green circles as IPPs, the centre of each circle being the exact position of the IPP.

Consider the following two systems:


diagram 6


diagram 7

Superficially similar in terms of shape, these two system diagrams actually represent quite different systems. Calculating precisely what the MDIs are for these systems would be time-consuming and difficult, but the important point is to give ballpark figures and make clear the direction of change when comparing multiple diagrams.

In Diagram 6, we see that five circles have their centres in the DZ, for a DZF of 12.5%. The MDI we will take as being 1.4, given our earlier stipulation that the side length of a system diagram is always eight units. In Diagram 7, we see that 13 circles are now in the DZ, for a DZF of 32.5%. The MDI we will take as being 1.9. That both the MDI and the DZF are higher for Diagram 7 is apparent at a glance, and we therefore understand that it represents a polity of much lower political stability than Diagram 6.

Let us focus on Diagram 7. The PP, intuitively seeking, seems reasonably well placed in that it is fairly central, and therefore constitutes a compromise position. Is this intuition correct? Calculating such things exactly would be time-consuming and is unnecessary for our purposes here anyway. Instead, we can use a visual-intuitive approach to discern general trends.


diagram 8

In this diagram we have shifted the PP and therefore the entire CZ upwards so as to put it roughly three quarters of the way up through the diagram. What effects does this have? We hope it is clear to readers that the MDI will increase as a consequence, which is to say the average distance from PP to IPPs has increased, as we are progressively moving further away from most IPPs and towards an ever smaller number.

What of the DZF? As we move from centre to periphery, it is clear that the number, and therefore the fraction, of our IPPs inside the circle falls, as it starts to include more and more empty space. We count 16 out of 40 circles as being in the DZ, for a DZF of 40%. This increase in both MDI and DZF makes this a radically unstable society, as we would expect of one whose PP has been positioned so as to please a subset of IPPs that is itself towards the fringes of the distribution.

The significance of this is as follows. In any system, there will be a position for the PP that minimizes the MDI for the system as a whole. As we see in the comparison between Diagrams 6 and 7, this minimum MDI may be higher or lower, but it will exist for any system diagram. Once the PP has been positioned there, there will be nothing else the government can do to bring the MDI down. The minimum MDI could only be reduced by moving the IPPs themselves around on the diagram, squashing them more closely into a single area. But this would consist, in the real world, of reengineering peoples’ political beliefs, which we will assert here is not possible, least of all in non-totalitarian societies.

In any given system diagram then, the minimum value the MDI can take on is a function of the distribution of IPPs. In a polity represented by a system diagram with a more or less optimally placed PP and a high MDI, there will be a generally high level of political discontent and anger, and the government has no means of reducing it. Whether or not bringing the MDI to this minimum will also take the DZF to a minimum is a question of whether or not the IPP distribution is symmetrical or not. In our examples so far, it has been, but consider the following system diagrams:

Continue reading

#ShowMeTheImam

The Baron has responded again to yet another commenter who left a link to yet another assertion that the Germanwings co-pilot who deliberately crashed the plane was a convert to Islam.

BB says:

Jim Hoft, like everyone else, is sourcing his post to Michael Mannheimer, who is well-respected. However, this is Mannheimer’s only source.

Mr. Mannheimer made a mistake when he based his assertion on that post. It provides the flimsiest of evidence — virtually non-existent. This story is being spun out of less than gossamer. If it is ever definitively refuted, it will discredit everyone who jumped on it.

I still think there’s a fair possibility that the guy was a convert. But we have no evidence to support it yet, NONE. The fact that he lived in Marseille and Bremen and suffered from depression proves nothing.

People need to be more careful in their assertions, and label outright speculation clearly as such.

This “co-pilot = Muslim” meme is reminiscent of that old childhood game “Telephone”. Do you remember when kids sat in a circle and one person was chosen to whisper into the ear of the child next to him some random sentence? That child in turn whispered it to the one next to him and so on, till it came to the last person in the circle. He would then repeat what he’d heard and the child next to him, who’d said the original sentence, would repeat that starter statement. The ending was so garbled compared to the beginning that the participants would have a real ROFL moment before beginning another round. [In their games, children are pretty good rule enforcers. The implicit rule here was to repeat as faithfully as possible what you thought you’d heard; it was no fun if spoilers just made up something.]

On Twitter this morning the same thing was going on. One fellow, John Galt, proposed there was no Islam involved and I agreed with him. A third person said we were wrong so I asked him for sourced information. I don’t understand his non-sequitur response. Maybe it was a form of “shut up”??

Here’s the screen cap. See for yourself:

Continue reading

How the Muslim Brotherhood Operates in Tennessee (Part 1 of 8)

Below is the latest newsletter from the Tennessee Council for Political Justice.

Newsletter #163 — How the Muslim Brotherhood Operates in Tennessee (Part 1 of 8)

Introduction

There are Islamists living in Tennessee who are top tier leaders in ISNA (Islamic Society of North America), one of the unindicted co-conspirator organizations named by the Muslim Brotherhood in its plan for the U.S.. This plan was exposed during the Holy Land Foundation terrorism financing prosecution.

There are Islamists living in Tennessee who are individually named in that same Muslim Brotherhood plan, and Islamists who have served in executive positions with Muslim Brotherhood front groups like CAIR and the MAS (Muslim American Society), both designated as terrorist organizations by the UAE.

CAIR’s executive director who visits Tennessee has publicly voiced his support for HAMAS. CAIR has inserted itself multiple times in Tennessee events, even trying to prevent Tennessee citizens from exercising First Amendment rights to free speech and free assembly. In 2013 CAIR’s Michigan director was brought to Nashville to train Muslim high school students in political activism. Currently CAIR has a de facto office in Nashville since its former CAIR-Houston director registered as a Tennessee lobbyist and is running the American Center for Outreach (ACO).

A former CAIR intern worked with the UT Knoxville MSA (Muslim Students Association) and was on the faculty of the private Islamic school in Knoxville. Another former CAIR chapter leader was the self-appointed Vanderbilt University Muslim chaplain who confirmed during a public event that he must abide by Islamic law that commands death for homosexuals.

Guest speakers known to be radical Islamists have been brought to Tennessee with messages like “Islam is better than democracy” and that under sharia law “the kafir [non-Muslims] won’t be equal with the Muslim.”

Continue reading

The PEGIDA Chronicles

Below is the latest on PEGIDA, as translated and annotated by JLH.

The PEGIDA Chronicles
by JLH

Another chapter in the PEGIDA Chronicles, which will have:

1)   the usual snarky mainstream review of PEGIDA;
2)   the emergence of the SPD as another major antagonist;
3)   a view from the inside of East Germany on the significance of the movement;
4)   supporting evidence from a school in Leipzig.
 

One casual mention elsewhere suggests that Bachmann and company have decided to ask their followers to bring a coin, button, etc. to drop into containers so they can do their own count. Like the rest of us, they are probably suspicious of “official” estimates of attendance.

1) First, from Handelsblatt, the continuing — and repeated — saga of Bachmann’s legal troubles. And the clever use of “what ifs.”

PEGIDA and Lutz Bachmann — Like a Superstar

By Alexander Schneider, March 23, 2014

They will promenade again this evening, perhaps again with “Lutz” banners. The PEGIDA protesters revere Lutz Bachmann, who is even bringing the Netherlands’ Geert Wilders to Dresden. But PEGIDA is also growing weaker — and also because of Bachmann.

The PEGIDA demonstration in Dresden. Will it be repentant or pugnacious? How would the co-founder of Islam-critical PEGIDA, Lutz Bachmann, have behaved standing in court? The deadline was withdrawn.

When Lutz Bachmann last stood before a court a year ago, the world took little notice. But things look different in March, 2015. As the co-initiator and frontman of the Islam- and asylum-critical movement PEGIDA, Bachmann has achieved nationwide fame. This evening in Dresden, thousands of people will again “walk” against Islamization of the West — with Bachmann in the middle of it all and at the speaker’s podium.

All this fame is now associated with the report of a canceled trial.

The 42-year-old Dresden native owes the mother of his son €2,000 in alimony and was sentenced to a fine of €1,600 in April, 2014. The appeal was to take place last Wednesday at the state court in Dresden. The justice system was already prepared for great media interest.

A few days ago, the appeal date was withdrawn and the original verdict was in force. According to Bachmann, the state’s attorney withdrew the appeal. The PEGIDA chief can breathe easy. He does not have to submit to an embarrassing trial.

It certainly would have been interesting to see how Bachmann — who has spent months on Mondays philosophizing on Christian, Western culture and demanding the expulsion of criminal foreigners — would act as a defendant. How would he behave when he is not making the rules? Repentant? Humble” Or undiscerning, pugnacious? Bachmann has extensive experience as a defendant.

The former insurance-, cell phone- and bratwurst hawker allegedly ran a nightclub and owns an advertising agency. He ran the gamut in the criminal code for 20 years — several driving-without-a-license, as well as a series of break-ins in the 1990s. He fled to South Africa and then spent several years in jail.

2) The Greens have already gotten excited about the meetings with CDU. The SPD and the Antifa are a little more direct. Note the clever use of carrots left behind to suggest — without any substance — that there were a lot of protestors.

From the Sächsische Zeitung:

PEGIDA — Carrots for the Scared Rabbits

At the 20th PEGIDA walk, Bachmann confirms that he has a mayoral candidate, but does not give a name. Is it an ex-AfD woman?*

by Thomas Schade

On Monday, PEGIDA celebrated not only something like an anniversary — for more than 20 weeks, followers of the Islam-critical movement have hit the streets to save the Judaeo-Christian West, as it is called in diverse statements. But Monday was also Carrot Day.

Demo Monday in Dresden

Frontman Lutz Bachmann’s gag was understood by only a few of his followers. According to police estimates, ca. 5,500 people were walking from the Dresden Altmarkt — so, fewer than a week ago. Only a handful of carrots were left behind — much too few for the “scared rabbits” who had collected at Postplatz. PEGIDA opponents from the alliance “Dresden For Everyone,” namely, had called for a “Parade of Scared Rabbits.” The idea was to point out the fears of some people who are rarely in public view: immigrants, Muslims, refugees.

That is why, hours before the weekly walk, Bachmann and Siegfried Däbritz encouraged their followers via Facebook to bring carrots. Bachmann suggested that they use them to stop up the “maws of the hideous Antifa rabbits.” They had to be fed, because “they are not capable of taking care of themselves.”

Continue reading

Gates of Vienna News Feed 3/26/2015

The big news story is still Germanwings Flight 9525. Check the articles below about Andreas Lubitz, the co-pilot who deliberately crashed the jet in the French Alps. He is said to have suffered from depression, and investigators have removed “items of interest” from his home and that of his parents.

In other news, after a series of air attacks against Yemen, Saudi Arabia has indicated that it may stage a ground invasion of its southern neighbor. Meanwhile, Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, who was traded by the United States for five Taliban terrorists, has been charged with desertion and may face life in prison.

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

Thanks to Andrea Shea King, C. Cantoni, Fjordman, Insubria, JD, Vlad Tepes, and all the other tipsters who sent these in.

Notice to tipsters: Please don’t submit extensive excerpts from articles that have been posted behind a subscription firewall, or are otherwise under copyright protection.

Caveat: Articles in the news feed are posted “as is”. Gates of Vienna cannot vouch for the authenticity or accuracy of the contents of any individual item posted here. We check each entry to make sure it is relatively interesting, not patently offensive, and at least superficially plausible. The link to the original is included with each item’s title. Further research and verification are left to the reader.

Continue reading

Ethno-Religious Diversity and the Limits of Democracy, Part One

The following essay by El Inglés is the first in a six-part series that examines the sociopolitical effects of mass immigration into the Western democracies. The author uses a simplified statistical model with graphs of examples to demonstrate the inevitability of a breakdown in the social contract wherever a sufficient number of immigrants from alien cultures are imported into a previously homogeneous society.

Ethno-Religious Diversity and the Limits of Democracy

by El Inglés

Part One: An Outline of the Model

Introduction

In this document, we present a conceptual model for understanding and predicting the effects that ethnic and religious diversity must have on the ability of democratic government to deliver what are widely considered to be its natural fruits: political stability, civil order, and harmonious relationships between different groups in a society. We do not mean to imply by this that democracy is, or is thought of as being, a panacea for all ills in a polity, nor that no such desirable states of affairs can exist at any time in non-democratic polities. We simply make the unremarkable observation that systems that allow the formation of governments strongly reflective of the political desires of the people of a country are often thought, with some justification, to be more likely to produce these fruits than systems that produce governments unreflective of these desires.

This claim notwithstanding, we will argue that democracy, being a mechanism for achieving a certain end under certain circumstances, suffers from the same fundamental problems as any other mechanism devised by man, to wit, that it is finite in its potency and that, exposed to stresses that it was not designed to deal with, it will fail. This failure can be sudden or protracted, but it will certainly occur eventually when the stresses exceed its ability to withstand them, just as a column will buckle or a beam will snap when the loads they are required to bear become too great.

This document consists of two main parts. In the first, we will develop our model and lay out the core ideas that underlie it. In the second, we will attempt to apply the model to our own country, Britain. We will then offer a few concluding thoughts.

Part 1: Outline of the Model

We commence by pointing out that human beings’ political desires can be very complex, as complex as the political world itself. Even a brief, off-the-cuff list of those matters that exercise human beings politically could quickly become rather long: the minimum wage, environmental policy, immigration, the size of the military, state control of utilities, and gun control all spring quickly to mind, not to mention abortion, state regulation of the economy, diplomatic relations, tax rates, housing, education, and healthcare. The entries in this initial list could themselves be furthered refined, parsed, quibbled over, and the relationships between them discussed ad infinitum. Diplomacy and the military are hardly unrelated, nor are tax rates and the size of the healthcare system. To all intents and purposes, the variety of political beliefs a person can hold is infinitely large.

Nonetheless, as all those who would attempt to model and understand complex phenomena understand, whatever field they work in, a great deal of the complexity of the real world must be stripped away and discarded if one wishes to model phenomena of interest within it. One must pull away and remove that which is non-essential, that which is not determinative with respect to the key characteristics and behaviours of the system, and retain that which is. In this document, we attempt to do just this in the context of democratic political systems, particularly those undergoing or likely to undergo political polarization as a consequence of ever-greater ethnic diversity.

Let us begin by stipulating that we aim to construct an imaginary 100-dimensional space in which every single member of the electorate in a given democratic polity is represented by a single point. Dimension 1 represents their attitudes towards foxhunting, Dimension 2 their beliefs with respect to the NHS, dimension 3 their position on the importance of the Royal Navy, and so forth. We have now distilled all the political complexities of the UK down to 100 variables varying continuously between 0 and 10, so all positions are now simple linear values of certain variables. If one believes that funding the Royal Navy is categorically more important than anything else in UK political life, then one’s Navy variable is 10. If one believes the Royal Navy should be disbanded with all haste, then one’s Navy variable is 0. One’s opinion on the new aircraft carriers commissioned by the Navy does not have an independent existence in this model, it is simply wrapped up somehow in one’s Navy variable, which is to say it is part of the complexity we have discarded.

We said above that all members of the electorate are now points in 100-dimensional space. Talk of more than three dimensions may well come across as being opaque or even meaningless. However, in this and similar contexts, the term 100-dimensional space has a straightforward meaning. Consider a 2-dimensional space with two points on it:


Diagram 1

We understand intuitively that this is a two-dimensional space, but do not perhaps appreciate that this means a point within this space needs two, and only two pieces of information to describe it: an x-coordinate and a y-coordinate. Once we know these two pieces of information, we know exactly where the point is, and, because it has no attributes other than its position, we know everything about it.

In a three-dimensional space, a point is defined by three pieces of information: an x-coordinate, a y-coordinate, and a z-coordinate. Again, we recognize this intuitively when we see a 3D chart on the page or the screen. What about a four-dimensional point? Does the same apply to it? Many would complain that they cannot visualize a point in four-dimensional space, but it is important to understand that our ability to visualize it has no bearing on the coherence of the underlying concept.

Medical researchers might need to characterize people as, for example, four-dimensional entities, which is to say as entities described by four variables. Imagine a team of researchers investigating resting pulse rates in men over the age of 60, who are described by four variables: age (60 and upwards), height, weight, and resting pulse rate. As far as the model constructed by the researchers is concerned, these are the only four ways in which these men can vary. Everything else is either fixed (their sex), or irrelevant (their taste in music). This is a decision made by the researchers who build the model, as to what was important to know and what was not. Drawing a graph and positioning these men on it as four-dimensional points would not be possible, as we cannot depict a four-dimensional space. But there is nothing complex about the notion that there are four ways in which they can vary from one another, all of which information could be written down in a simple table.

Going back to our 100-dimensional space, we can now see that it is simply that conceptual space in which 100-dimensional entities are to be found, entities defined by us on the basis of our 100 variables. If we had the eyes to see this space and the points contained therein as clearly as we can see two-dimensional space, we would undoubtedly see patterns similar to those we tend to see in scatter plots for other phenomena. Some areas of the space would have concentrations of points, some none or virtually none, and others would have moderate densities of points. We would likely see that those who placed great value on the monarchy also tended to believe in funding the military generously, and that those who were opposed to foxhunting believed in funding it rather less generously. Irrespective of the accuracy of these two specific claims, it is surely clear that certain political beliefs tend to correlate with each other, in that people holding one belief are likely to hold certain other specific beliefs as well.

Scholars seeking to model more rigorously the phenomena we discuss in this essay could create sophisticated computer models to keep track of many different variables for each elector in the model. Here we must discard nearly all of this complexity for two reasons: firstly, we cannot, given our limitations, and the limitations of this project, deal with 100 different variables, or even ten different variables, and secondly, we could not represent these models visually even if we could create them. As such, we are forced to discard 98 of the 100 dimensions that describe an individual politically in our system, and leave the remaining two undefined. They represent political diversity, but only the political diversity we ascribe to them in the context of particular diagrams and discussions. They do not represent left-wing vs. right-wing, authoritarian vs. libertarian or any other axis of political variation we might imagine, unless we define them as representing these positions in any given context.

Having reduced our system to a two-dimensional one, we can represent it visually with confidence, in a way we could not even in three dimensions. A brief look at a representative selection of three-dimensional scatter plots will make it clear that they are deeply imperfect representations of the phenomena they purport to depict. The best of them are at least somewhat confusing, the worst of them not remotely meaningful, apparently as a function of the density of points, the degree of overlap of separate points, and the specific graphic style used. For this reason, we use simple two-dimensional political spaces. As they depict specific polities (even if the polities are purely hypothetical) that can be considered systems of interacting parts, we will refer to them as system diagrams. All the system diagrams depicted in this essay will be shown to the same scale, so they can be directly compared with each other. They will be squares, with two undefined axes of variation, one vertical, one horizontal.

Simple Systems Diagrams and Their Analyses

Each standard system diagram will have on it a cross, which we shall call the Policy Point (PP). This point represents the suite of policies actually being implemented by a government at any point in time. It is itself a point in 100-dimensional space, collapsed down into two-dimensional space for the purposes of simplicity and visual depictability, the same type of entity as an individual’s political preferences. Each circle represents an elector or electors, in that its centre corresponds to their policy preferences. We will call the circles Individual Policy Points (IPPs), in that they mark the policies that the individuals they represent would like to see implemented.

Continue reading

Obama Is A City of One

This president is so immature he’s becoming a national embarrassment.

First he snubs the NATO Secretary General who was in town this week:

President Barack Obama has yet to meet with the new head of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and won’t see Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg this week, even though he is in Washington for three days. Stoltenberg’s office requested a meeting with Obama well in advance of the visit, but never heard anything from the White House, two sources close to the NATO chief told me.

The leaders of almost all the other 28 NATO member countries have made time for Stoltenberg since he took over the world’s largest military alliance in October. Stoltenberg, twice the prime minister of Norway, met Monday with Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper in Ottawa to discuss the threat of the Islamic State and the crisis in Ukraine, two issues near the top of Obama’s agenda.

Kurt Volker, who served as the U.S. permanent representative to NATO under both President George W. Bush and Obama, said the president broke a long tradition. “The Bush administration held a firm line that if the NATO secretary general came to town, he would be seen by the president … so as not to diminish his stature or authority,” he told me.

America’s commitment to defend its NATO allies is its biggest treaty obligation, said Volker, adding that European security is at its most perilous moment since the Cold War. Russia has moved troops and weapons into eastern Ukraine, annexed Crimea, placed nuclear-capable missiles in striking distance of NATO allies, flown strategic-bomber mock runs in the North Atlantic, practiced attack approaches on the U.K. and Sweden, and this week threatened to aim nuclear missiles at Denmark’s warships.

“It is hard for me to believe that the president of the United States has not found the time to meet with the current secretary general of NATO given the magnitude of what this implies, and the responsibilities of his office,” Volker said…

“Hard to believe” this? Obama appears to go out of his way to play hardball all by himself. The NATO Secretary General is a former prime minister of Norway and his politics are the leftist variety of which Obama is so fond.

Perhaps our president, with less than two years left to serve, is simply bored and menopausal. Perhaps he had a golf week scheduled. Or maybe March Madness basketball interfered with having to perform pesky duties. Maybe Stoltenberg refused ahead of time to kiss his ring. Whatev.

That oddity was but a passive-aggressive insult; it doesn’t begin to reach the level of his newest revenge on Israel for refusing to knuckle under. How dare they re-elect a prime minister Obama loathes? Now it’s time to bring his gun to a knife fight in a petty display of power:

Continue reading

French Authorities: Co-Pilot’s Doing

The Co-Pilot did it:

The co-pilot of a Germanwings jet that went down in the French Alps, killing 150 people, appears to have crashed the plane deliberately, a Marseille prosecutor said on Thursday.

The German citizen, left in sole control of the Airbus A320 after the captain left the cockpit, refused to re-open the door and pressed a button that sent the jet into its fatal descent, the prosecutor told a news conference carried on live television.

And so the speculation ends…a German ethnic citizen who won awards for his excellence in flying deliberately murdered the people in his care.

The speculation was rational. The end story is not.

Gates of Vienna News Feed 3/25/2015

I haven’t had the time or the eye power to do much posting tonight, but Vlad, Fjordman, JD, Papa Whiskey, and the other tipsters have done the work for me. Among the stories worth looking at are the Saudi military operations against Yemen, and the arrest in Italy of a recruiter for the Islamic State.

The biggest story, of course, is the crash of Germanwings 9525. In order to accept any explanation that does not involve deliberate and malicious human intervention, one must believe in no fewer than four coincidences:

1.   The captain happened to leave the cockpit.
2.   The copilot happened to have some sort of medical emergency that prevented him from letting the captain back into the cockpit, but not until after
3.   the copilot had overridden the passcode system by which the captain could have opened the cockpit door.
4.   While the captain was locked out and the copilot was incapacitated, the computer happened to malfunction, directing the plane to begin a controlled descent that ended on the side of a mountain.
 
 

I’ll let Occam’s razor do the rest. The French authorities are still maintaining that terrorism is an “unlikely” explanation. Keep trying, boys!

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

Thanks to Fjordman, heroyalwhyness, Insubria, JD, Papa Whiskey, Steen, Vlad Tepes, and all the other tipsters who sent these in.

Notice to tipsters: Please don’t submit extensive excerpts from articles that have been posted behind a subscription firewall, or are otherwise under copyright protection.

Caveat: Articles in the news feed are posted “as is”. Gates of Vienna cannot vouch for the authenticity or accuracy of the contents of any individual item posted here. We check each entry to make sure it is relatively interesting, not patently offensive, and at least superficially plausible. The link to the original is included with each item’s title. Further research and verification are left to the reader.

Continue reading

Look the Other Way, You Racist!

Culture-enrichers throughout the West are adept at gaming the system in their host countries. Wherever there is mass immigration into white countries, there are immigrants lined up waiting to grab government handouts, taking from their naïve hosts whatever they can get, by fraudulent means if necessary.

The following investigative report from Channel 7 in Australia reveals a perfect child care scam — perfect for the culture-enrichers, that is. Dishonest companies (run at least in part by immigrants) take massive quantities of money and pay it out to people who watch other people’s kids, while other people get paid to watch theirs. That is, all these people have well-paying full-time jobs watching each other’s kids. Furthermore, the companies that issue fraudulent qualifying “certificates” to the caregivers are the same ones that receive the government money to pay for the child care.

When exposed, the immigrants know exactly how to press the right politically correct buttons with white people: they call the TV crew “racists”.

What a great system!

Many thanks to Vlad Tepes for uploading this video:

Hat tip: Liam1304.