Gates of Vienna News Feed 7/31/2015

The Italian coast guard rescued more than 1,200 migrants and recovered two bodies from five unseaworthy vessels off the coast of Libya. Meanwhile, the European representative of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) says that despite its financial difficulties, Greece must do more to provide aid and shelter for the illegal immigrants that land on its islands.

In other news, for the first time since the massacre by Anders Behring Breivik four years ago, the youth camp on the island of Utøya in Norway has reopened.

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

Thanks to C. Cantoni, Caroline Glick, Fjordman, Insubria, JD, Nidra Poller, Phyllis Chesler, PS, 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

Gays vs. Islam: Who Will Win?

In my fundraising post this morning I discussed the rule of the Narrative in the post-modern world created by Cultural Marxism. The Narrative is supreme, yet it is an ever-shifting collection of ideological constructs patched together for expediency’s sake by those who would rule us.

One thread of the Narrative is “Islam, the religion of peace, harmony, and tolerance”. Another demands the celebration and elevation of various forms of sexual deviance. When these two threads clash with one another — as they must inevitably do when Islam is involved — only one will prevail. Which will it be?

A hint may be found in the following video from Rinkeby, a culturally enriched suburb of Stockholm. When a gay pride parade passed through Rinkeby, it was met by leftist (not Muslim) demonstrators, who attacked the pride participants as “racists”. I’ll bet that was a surprise!

Many thanks to Liberty DK for the translation, and to Vlad Tepes for the subtitling and annotations:

A History of PEGIDA


PEGIDA rally, Ostragehege, Dresden (click to enlarge)

Although it is not in the news as much as it used to be, PEGIDA is still going strong. The following timeline of PEGIDA in Dresden since its inception was kindly translated by JLH, who includes this introductory explanation:

In case you were wondering what has been happening with PEGIDA, here is a private, personal peek behind the scenes in Dresden. The following diary of PEGIDA events comes from a page by Thomas Jacob, whose vocation or avocation is photography, with particular concentrations in local color and tourism, gardening and politics. This is his research on the actual numbers of the Dresden PEGIDA marches., as well as other interesting comments

The latest PEGIDA walk leads to the office building of the local “lying press” (Lügenpresse): the Sächsische Zeitung and the Morgenpost. Early on, the former of the two papers ran a remarkably straightforward, almost innocent-eye report of one of the first marches. That was before the Red Queen turned her baleful eye on Dresden and led her government as well as its opposition in verbal assaults against the “right-extremist, racist” movement. The nearly universal disapproval of media and politicians was reflected in a bitter split within AfD, some of whose local politicians were supporting PEGIDA.

Since then, any positive words about the movement have spread by internet and word-of-mouth, not only from East to West in Germany, but surfacing in places like Sweden. If they didn’t have bad press, they’d have no press at all.

The translated diary:

Pictures on German History — PEGIDA

Statements in the media on the number of participants

My journalistic research, personal estimates, evaluation of statistics, interviews and head-counts from photos have shown the following: The numbers published in the media for the first six walks were approximately 50% of those actually in attendance. Then, suddenly, more exact numbers were given and at times even exaggerated.

Then, at the latest by May 4, 2015, the numbers were reduced by more than 50%.

October 20, 2014

350 participants (according to Wikipedia). At present, I have no means of testing that.

October 27, 2014

500 participants (from “Latest Dresden News” in Middle German Radio — MDR)
“Participation far lower than expected. Instead of the expected 1,000 people, fewer than one-half came.”

By my estimate, 1,000.

November 3, 2014

1,000 according to MDR.

November 10, 2014

Ca. 1,700 (MDR)

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

[The following entry seems to me to be mis-dated and confused with the following entry, so I have moved the notation of “5th demo” to here. I have also added the following entry of November 24, since it does not appear in the diary.]

November 17, 2014 (5th PEGIDA demonstration)

On Postplatz — Varying estimates in the media of 1,700-2,500. In actuality, 4,000. BILD corrected its estimate from 300 to 3,000.

It is likely, at this point that new ideas for reporting are being developed in the “guided” media, which were enacted beginning December, 2014.

November 24, 2014

This march is not in the diary, but I note it as the one in which the chant “Wir sind das Volk!” may have first appeared.

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

December 1, 2014

7,500 demonstrators according to MDR. Their progress was blocked by 1,200 counter-demonstrators on the banks of the Elbe by the casements.

December 15, 2014

15,000 reported — I estimate 14,000.

December 22, 2014 (Christmas carols on Theaterplatz)

Press reports of exactly 17,500 on were noteworthy for their accuracy — my estimate, ca. 19,000.

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

January 5, 2015

However, the estimates of 18,000 for this cold and rainy day were clearly exaggerated. The reason may be deduced by thoughtful readers. After this date, the monopoly media’s reporting slowly and then ever more discernibly decreased the number of participants. My estimate was 11,000 participants, and many women in attendance, for the first time.

Continue reading

An Emergent Change of State

Summer Fundraiser 2015, Day Five

Here we are at the fifth day of the fundraiser, and this has been an eventful week so far. Yesterday I took care of the resource problem posed by our car — I spent most of the afternoon at the repair place, but the problem is fixed, and it didn’t break the bank, thank the Lord.

Then last night I got a nasty case of the trots (or, as they say in Bradford, “Mohammed’s Revenge”). That put me out of action for a while, but I woke up this morning feeling normal again, ready to get back in the traces.

Tip jarFor those who just arrived: this is the one week of the summer quarter when we grab our readers by the ankles, turn them upside down, and shake them until the change drops out of their pockets.

Contrary to what HOPE not hate, Imran Hussain, and the Grauniad might think, this blog is not funded by the Israeli government, or right-wing billionaires, or conservative think tanks. The wherewithal to keep it going — and to keep the electricity on and food in the fridge here at Schloss Bodissey — arrives in the form of modest donations from individual readers. So if you appreciate what we do here — and what Vlad does, because we give him a cut — please look for the tip cup on the sidebar of the main page and make it clink.

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

The theme of the current bleg is “Resources”, and this week’s whimsy of circumstance has provide ample food for thought on the topic. Not just the car, and the phone, and the internet connection, but the attempt by the Red-Green alliance of the British establishment to bring legal force to bear against us.

It made me think about the Soviet Union during the days of Stalin’s rule. As is now well-known, accurate information was generally hard to come by for the leadership of the U.S.S.R. The system they designed and built did not encourage or reward the propagation of accurate information. Quite the contrary, in fact: it encouraged the propagation of falsehoods, provided that they supported the Narrative. And the Narrative, of course, was dictated at any given moment by the Central Committee of the Politburo.

When Comrade Stalin requested, say, the latest statistics for iron ore production, it was not at all in the interests of the Commissar for Mineral Resources or his subordinates to provide figures that showed their output was well under the target set by the Five-Year Plan. They all knew that to do so would put them on the next train to the gulag, or get them dragged out of their beds in the middle of the night and shot. Thus there were enormous incentives at every level of the system for them to fudge production statistics and tell the Leader what he wished to hear. And if the managers of the tank factories were unable to acquire enough ore to meet their own quotas — why, that was their problem. Let them fudge their own statistics!

Such is the nature of totalitarian rule. Pursuit and dissemination of accurate information is not encouraged. The truth is not highly regarded. What matters is not what is true, but what reinforces the Narrative.

“But, Baron,” you say, “what does that have to do with Britain or America in 2015? We don’t live under totalitarian rule.”

Ah, well — that’s the interesting part. The oligarchs who rule us under a veneer of democratic choice have gone one better that Stalin: they have devised a system to keep their citizens under tight control without jackboots or neck-shots or slave labor camps. Control is exercised primarily through financial means. The system generates a level of wealth upon which ordinary people become dependent, so that its withdrawal is to be avoided by any means. The dreaded IRS and Inland Revenue, rather than the KGB and the Stasi, act as the enforcement arm of the system. Even when the authorities resort to legal action against dissidents, the purpose of the procedure is not to obtain a conviction — although that is always to be welcomed — but to impoverish the target. Just ask Geert Wilders how much his two acquittals cost him.

Continue reading

Gates of Vienna News Feed 7/30/2015

The identification number on a fragment of a jetliner recovered in the Indian Ocean proves that it was from a Boeing 777. There is as yet no proof, however, that the 777 is the missing Malaysian Airlines flight MH370, which disappeared in March 2014.

In other news, the heat wave in Italy has done severe damage to the country’s seafood industry, especially in fish farms, where high water temperatures have caused seaweed to ferment, killing fish and shellfish through lack of oxygen.

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

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

Continue reading

Another Leftist Smear Job

Our expatriate English correspondent Peter takes a look at HOPE not hate’s scurrilous “research” paper targeting Gates of Vienna and other Counterjihad groups.

Another Leftist Smear Job

by Peter

Several days ago, a report was released to the press entitled, “The Muhammad Cartoons — The Counter-Jihadist Plot To Ignite A Civil War In Britain.” The author, one Nick Lowles, is the Chief Executive of an organization calling itself “Hope not Hate” and both he and his organization have been identified by various blogs and commentators as having acquired a reputation for lies and unsubstantiated smears. The report has been published in the name of Hope not Hate and, contrary to that organisation’s claims, it appears to have been cobbled together in an almighty rush and is nothing more than an orchestrated smear targetted against a number of people of whom Mr Lowles & co disapprove.

Hope not Hate is an interestingly named organization, which does not inspire much hope and most people I know hate it. It was founded in 2004 allegedly “to provide a positive antidote to the politics of hate” according to their website. They claim to “combine first class research with community organising & grassroots actions to defeat hate groups at elections and to build community resilience against extremism.” If this statement were true, how much “first class research” went into writing a shoddy, badly researched “report” like this?

Hope not Hate claims to be funded entirely by membership subscriptions. If so, how do they explain the £66,000 they received as a result of a funding agreement signed by the Department for Communities and Local Government sometime between 2012 and 2013? Do they also expect us to believe they receive no donations from the various left-wing Trades Unions, politicians or celebrities with whom they are associated? No matter.

In their preamble, they claim to report on a meeting that took place between “Anne Marie Waters, who is fronting up the cartoon exhibition, with EDL founder Stephen Lennon, Britain’s most militant counter-jihadist, Alan Ayling, and Jim Dowson founder of the far right, mosque invading party, ‘Britain First’ only three weeks before the exhibition was announced”. The report continues: “They openly discussed using the cartoons (which cause offence to many Muslims) to incite a violent backlash, which they hoped would spark a wider conflict between communities and, ultimately, civil war. They repeat this accusation in various parts of their missive, but provide no evidence to substantiate it, only hearsay.

Are they kidding us? These are serious charges they are making including conspiracy to cause riot, civil disorder and affray. If convicted, the accused could go to prison for many years but not on this “evidence” or any other information contained in this meandering and repetitive document.

They give no date or location when or where this meeting was alleged to have taken place only that it happened three weeks before the cartoon exhibition was announced, and the evidence that it took place at all? According to an article by Breitbart, it was an inflammatory article on the so-called Knights Templar blog by one Peter Mellows, whoever he is. This does not inspire confidence as to the veracity of the rest of the document.

In order to smear the “conspirators” and the “counter-jihad” in general, the authors of the report list what they think we believe in, with the unspoken innuendo that nice people shouldn’t believe politically incorrect things like this. Amongst the items listed are:

Britain’s ‘counter-jihad’ movement believes that Islam is a supremacist and expansionist ideology, which poses an existential threat to the West. They believe there is no difference between moderate or hardline followers of Islam.

There are a lot of Muslims who say the same things such as Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish Prime Minister who has stated on a number of occasions “There is only one Islam” Who knows best, a practicing Muslim world leader or Nick Lowles? Lowles will probably tell you he does. The report continues:

Continue reading

Pontius Pilate Pontificates at Perversity. Again.

Diana West is on the loose again.

This time it’s a clever take down of… what else? In her words, “the often perverse National Review”.

This one’s not about a new attack on her. For a change, this is a bout (or a “barroom brawl” as Mr. McCarthy of the perverse Review might sprightly say) between Conrad Black at Perversity and Angelo Codevilla, with the latter writing a review in a recent edition of The Claremont Review of Books.[These embedded links are at Diana’s site].

Wait, wait — don’t click off. If you know anything at all about Diana West’s repeated scourgings by that group of Pontius Pilates at The National Review you won’t want to miss this one.

Ms. West says:

Readers of the often-perverse National Review will have noticed that FDR biographer and convicted felon Conrad Black has opened an extended firefight with Angelo Codevilla over Codevilla’s review-essay in the Claremont Review of Books about Henry Kissinger’s recent book.

Codevilla notes:

“My review’s one and only reference to Conrad Black was to quote his praise of Kissinger’s book: “brilliantly conceived and executed . . . even by Henry Kissinger’s very high standards.” Black construes this as an “attack” on him, of “extreme belligerence.” Who am I to disagree?”

Diana observes:

Who, indeed. But such galactic departures from reality are quite routine for Black.

Recall that after scrawling a series of bathroom-wall-style attacks on Yours Truly — “right-wing loopy,” “occasionally aroused cautious hopefulness that she has been house-trained,” “the West farrago of lies,” “jejune dementedness,” etc. — Black turned around in Attack Piece No. 2 (of four) and wrote:

“I am not one of those whom she can possibly include as making an ad hominem attack on her; I don’t know her, and have never commented on her as a person.”

Fantastic! Just as Black imagines “extreme belligerence” where nothing belligerent appeared, he imagines that ever-linkable ad hominem attacks he, himself, committed never appeared.

Makes you wonder if the inestimable Mr. Black suffered any head blows while in the pokey. But perhaps he is simply remaining in character, and a rather down low sporty character it is. His wiki notes that at age 14 he was expelled from school for selling stolen exam papers. In other words, a fundamental disrespect for the law appears to have emerged early.

I’d never examined this man’s life before, being only vaguely aware that he was accused of stealing a lot of money. It turns out to have been an appallingly great deal of OPM — Other People’s Money, with estimates varying between sixty and eighty-four millions of dollars. Is Mr. Black paradigmatic of the elite criminal? Is he the modern poor little rich boy, the one for whom no amount is ever deemed “enough” to fill his boundless emptiness?

Who can ever plumb the mysteries of the human heart, particularly the larcenous wealthy man’s heart? Those millions belonged to someone(s) else but since it is white-collar crime, we never learn exactly who it was he left so bleedingly broke. You can find some of the stories here. What you’ll notice is how long and how expensively the coward Black dragged this out.

Continue reading

Now We’re in the Local Paper

News of Hate Not Hope’s little treatise has now made its way into The Bradford Telegraph and Argus. The esteemed Imran Hussain makes another appearance there, calling for the full force of the law to be brought against Gates of Vienna.

Well, I can tell the CPS something to save them a lot of time and money: “No, this website’s owners are not breaching the law. They are in full compliance with the law of the land that holds jurisdiction over them. This website is protected by the First Amendment of the United States of America, which guarantees our God-given right to publish what we wish. This same right is acknowledged as one of our Ancient Liberties under English Common Law — which has fallen into sad neglect in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

“So stick that in your hookah and smoke it.”

Apparently these bozos still haven’t noticed that we are not in fact subjects of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. How reliable can the rest of their “research” be?

Bradford MP calls for action against far right website which he fears offers ‘blueprint for civil war’

BRADFORD East MP Imran Hussain is calling for action to be taken against a far right website which he claims offers a blueprint for civil war.

The Gates of Vienna website has posted a series of articles which Mr Hussain claims encourage the establishment of paramilitary groups, bomb manuals, advice on avoiding police capture and techniques to survive police interrogation.

Now he has joined forces with fellow Labour MPs Ian Austin, Ruth Smeeth, Paula Sherriff, Wes Streeting and John Cryer to write to the director of public prosecutions (DPP) Alison Saunders.

The letter asks for her to consider if the site’s owners are breaching the law.

The MPs have reacted to a new report, called the Muhammad Cartoons by Nick Lowles, from Hope Not Hate’s chief executive, a group which seeks to challenge and defeat the politics of hate and extremism within local communities.

The Gates of Vienna has also been promoting an upcoming exhibition of cartoons of the prophet Muhammad in London.

Continue reading

Yikes! Is That Thor I Hear?

Or perhaps I should say “Hark, what Thunder this way comes?”

Not again!

I heard the rumble and looked at the radar. There is one tiny red storm cell just barely to the north of us. It is moving at zero knots and headed ENE – i.e., away from here and making for Washington D.C. Thus, by all that is logical it ought to be on its way.

Rats! Those background noises are increasing.

Obviously that last storm has left me wary. It could indeed rain on their parade ten miles from here and still knock out a junction box – or whatever they’re called – connected to us. I loathe these beta designs for which we are the guinea pigs (is “guinea” racist yet?) and still must pay for their experiments.

Love the rain, hate the ruin…and the Baron is away, getting the car repaired. Double rats!

But now y’all know…if our page seems to be in stasis then either we’re down or y’all have gone to bed because for sure I’m still here…

Note: Obviously I snagged this image from Vlad’s previous post on our weather. Those are some cool mammary clouds in his picture, but these are not those. I’m only seeing gloom, hearing boom!, and fearing doom. Don’t mind me…I used to like storms.

Hey, Business is Business, You Know?

This amusing image is a clever amalgam of two major current news topics: Obama’s peace-for-our-time Iranian nuke deal, and the wholesale trade by Planned Parenthood in harvested baby parts. The text at the bottom of the poster reads “Planned Parenthood approves of this message. They need the money for a Lamborghini.”

Can anyone determine where the photo was taken?

We Were Chuffed, Y’all!

Summer Fundraiser 2015, Day Four

Here we are on the fourth day of our 2015 Summer Quarterly Fundraiser! Whoo, boy — when part of the week is spent visiting Purgatorio instead of doing fundraising posts, the experience distorts time. Moments become elongated while hours disappear behind a cloud of pages. Label me FRETFUL when I can’t set off my bombs.

I had been soo psyched up to continue the battle with the Forces of Evil (HateNotHope), and instead here I was muscled into silence by our non-functioning phone and internet. As much as I’d have liked to, I couldn’t yell loud enough to be heard by those bumblers. [By the way, have you noticed they’re not real smart? I told one person those HnH folks “weren’t the sharpest knives in the drawer. More like plastic butter cutters”.].

My Irish was up, ready to do battle and then the Karma Dude closed the gates. BWAH! No fair!

The Baron and I are so different. Not able to work directly on this fundraiser, he spent his time in Coventry virtuously clearing out his Gates of Vienna “To Do” box. Me? I spent much of it wallowing in books: at least the Kindle worked.

Let’s just say we utilize our resources differently.

Tip jarSo now, back in the real world again, the B has all that work accomplished and is being doubly virtuous about not comparing our methods for handling stress. Except for a bad case of chiggers from wading up to my knees in the rudbeckia (so much for gardening instead) all I have to show for it is a lot of new information. I can tell you a few things I didn’t know (or know as well or in the same way) before we were cut off from the world. To me, learning something new in the face of frustration is both a distraction and a solace. I’m sure that’s a Tolkien paraphrase from somewhere or another but it’s true: feel sad? Learn something.

For instance, I discovered these books —

  • One concerned the leading new theories about heart disease. What we need to know about homocysteine and three essential B vitamins to maintain healthy blood vessels. In sum: throw out all those cholesterol tests your doctor gave you, and be your own doctor/researcher to the extent you can. The more you know the less fearful you’ll be. Yes, the Baron will get another vitamin to add to his collection; he doesn’t mind.
  • Why “adverse” childhood events wreak havoc on your body’s immune system. With enough of these adversities experienced by age 14 or so, in the long term you’re much more likely to develop diabetes, arthritis, heart disease, asthma, obesity, depression, and all those other “diseases of civilization”… unless you figure out how to compensate for them. The information is awe-inducing (Cartesian duality sure didn’t do us any favors when it comes to our mind/body split) and revealing. Who knew the gut is lined with brain cells?? Those mid-life crises will eventually become predictable and, as needed, preventable. But none of that will change until we get over not being in charge, and certainly not until we begin treating children with care and deep respect. Hint: they don’t “grow out of it”. [The Baron has proved these ideas by omission: he briefly had a bout when young of juvenile rheumatoid arthritis. But it all disappeared when he met me 😉 of course. Other than the macular degeneration caused by sitting out in the noonday sun painting landscapes for two decades, he has no ailments. And I plan to keep it that way as long as I can. As he said, “There’s not much to say about my normal childhood.” Normal is boring. He discovered this in college when many of his friends had Stories to Tell and he became the Listener. Annoying to some of us, he remembered the Stories].
  • Then there was the intriguing life story of a middle-aged Pakistani woman of high birth who became a Christian (during the 1960s and following). No one proselytized her — what Christian missionary would dare? Their work was limited to the poorest of the poor, to what Pakistanis called “the sweepers”. In other words, just as it was in Paul’s time and is now in, say, China, Christianity is for those with nothing left to lose but their misery. Yet this wealthy woman was converted via a series of vivid dreams. After a long period of solitude — the woman even baptized herself in her tub — when she finally came out of the closet, her shocked and humiliated family built a social cordon sanitaire around her; all her Muslim servants fled. She movingly described their tarnished “honor” due to her own behavior and beliefs. A fascinating story about metanoia (no, she never uses the word), and how “the mighty are brought low”. In this case, a haughty woman learned humility and forgiveness.

Of course throughout all of this I was fretting, envisioning all of you clicking on to an empty site. [Thank you, Vlad, for filling that space.]

Books are my escape when I feel helpless. In this case, I was cornered by events I had so carefully planned to circumvent should they arise. As I said in the comments today and in a note to a donor:

Continue reading

Gates of Vienna News Feed 7/29/2015

More than 1,800 migrants were rescued in the Mediterranean and brought to safety in Italy, and thirteen migrant corpses were also recovered. Meanwhile, overnight 2,000 migrants attempted to enter the Channel Tunnel between France and Britain.

In other news, a spokesman for the police union in the southern Swedish city of Malmö says that staff shortages on the police force are putting the public at risk.

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

Thanks to C. Cantoni, Fjordman, Insubria, JD, Phyllis Chesler, RRR, 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.

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

Bacchus-u-Akbar! Long live the blondes! Long live the brunettes!

The following brief excerpt from a Mozart opera is apropos to our work here, and welcome comic relief from all the horror and brutality that is the daily fare of those who closely study the Great Jihad.

Our Arabic translator ritamalik, who sent the tip for this splendid clip, provides this introduction:

Here is a small scene from Mozart’s opera, “Die Entführung aus dem Serail” or “Abduction from the Seraglio”. This duet is between two very funny characters in this opera: one is Pedrillo, a Spaniard and a servant who is captive in the house of a Ottoman Pasha; and Osmin, the overseer for the Pasha, and a very cruel and strict Muslim man. In this scene Pedrillo is trying to make Osmin drunk so that he and his master and their beloved girls can escape the harem of the Pasha, where they are captive, and go back to Spain.

What strikes me about this piece is how refreshingly politically incorrect it is! Here in this scene we see Pedrillo pushing Osmin, who is obviously a Muslim and can’t drink alcohol, to drink wine. At the start there is a line where doubtful Osmin says (in German):

“Ob ich’s wage?
Ob’s ich trinke?
Ob’s wohl Allah sehen kann?”

“Shall I chance it?
Shall I drink it?
Can Allah see me?”

And then of course Osmin rapidly relents, and after a few sips he is drunk and is singing praises to blonde and brunette girls with Pedrillo and dancing, before he passes out!

It is very funny, and I often think: Can we write things like this today in the current PC atmosphere? Probably not, and that is a chilling thought! It is a shame that we had more freedom and more honesty about Islam in the 18th century than we have today, two hundred years later.

The whole opera is really funny and very politically incorrect. It is very honest about the vile Ottoman habit of capturing non-Muslim women and forcing them into their harems as sex-slaves. It is strange how Westerners knew these things back them so clearly, but now they have gotten amnesia and forgotten it all.

Anyway, great music and very funny libretto; highly recommend. By the way — the librettist is Christoph Friedrich Bretzner with adaptations by Gottlieb Stephanie, and the composer, as I mentioned before, is Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. It premiered on 16 July 1782 at the Vienna Burgtheater.

Many thanks to Oz-Rita for the translation (with poetic license), and to Vlad Tepes for the subtitling:

Transcript:

Continue reading