I know nobody is reading this blog tonight — they’re all glued to their vidscreens watching the third debate between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton.
However, just in case anyone takes a break from Big Hair vs. Big Ankles #3 and wanders in, here’s an open thread to discuss tonight’s momentous events in Las Vegas.
Most readers will be familiar with Bill Warner’s organization Center for the Study of Political Islam. Over the last few years Dr. Warner has expanded his operation to include a European branch, CSPI International.
CSPII has just launched a new website called Think Twice to provide information related to the proposed visa-free travel arrangement between the European Union and Turkey. The visa-free zone is supposed to be a reward for Turkey in return for its promise to stem the flow of illegal immigrants into Europe.
From the introduction to the English-language section of Think Twice:
EU visa-free policy with Turkey
There are 751 elected members of the European Parliament who on a daily basis make decisions which influence the lives of millions of Europeans. Each decision, therefore, necessitates all relevant information from a wide array of sources.
Soon, there will be a vote regarding the visa-free entry agreement with Turkey. If you agree that this is an important issue please use the following facts to educate your politicians. We should not tell them how to vote, but rather help them make an informed decision. We believe that when many people do small acts, they can create a huge impact. On the bottom of this page you can click on the “Take Action” button to see how you can take part in this educational campaign.
The site has five tabbed topics:
Migration
From a long term perspective, establishing visa-free relation between Turkey and the EU can be considered a step in wrong direction. This concession will, among other things, lead to decreased Turkish motivation to solve the migration crisis and permanently increase the number of Turkish citizens in the EU.
Visa-free relation with Turkey poses the following risks to the EU:
- Decrease in Turkey’s motivation to solve the migration crisis
- Increase in the number of Turkish citizens in the EU, with or without necessary permissions
- Increase in asylum applications by Turkish citizens
- Chance of transferring ethnic conflicts from Turkey to Europe (e.g. Kurds)
- Difficulty enforcing Turkish obligations to the EU
- Opening an “official” route for both migrants and radicals
- Problems reintroducing visa requirements with Turkey
- Increased impact of political Islam in the EU
Establishing visa-free relation with Turkey brings about a wide array of risks. The chance of repeating the history of liberalized visa relations with the West-Balkan countries is high. Many of the people who migrated to Germany, Belgium, and other places attempted to obtain asylum (unsuccessfully of course), causing administrative congestion and eliciting discussions about re-introducing visas. Turkey is much larger than the West-Balkan countries, has substantial internal socioeconomic differences and deals with deep seeded issues related to the protection of minorities. The number of citizens that belong to low socioeconomic classes or disadvantaged minorities (Kurds, Armenians, Christians) is high in present day Turkey. Additionally, a large number of fraudulent or illegally “purchased” Turkish passports are being provided to migrants from other countries during their stay in Turkey. Considering the plight of Turkish minorities, the EU is an attractive destination for many minority Turkish citizens.
The EU wants to grant Turkey visa-free entry without Turkey fulfilling all the conditions necessary — e.g. adjustment of anti-terror laws. If the EU establishes visa-free relations with Turkey before Ankara complies with pre-established conditions, how will it persuade Turkey make any internal changes? President Erdogan is blackmailing the EU with threats to open the borders and transport migrants to the EU countries. Ankara’s actions and threats should make it obvious the EU can’t rely on Turkey as a partner in solving the migration crisis. Politically, once visas are no longer required for Turkish citizens, it will be very complicated to reintroduce the visa requirements between Turkey and EU nations.
Security
The legacy media on both sides of the Atlantic have portrayed the recent referendum in Hungary as a defeat for Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. Disregarding the fact that 98% of those who voted rejected the EU’s migration quotas, the referendum’s failure to reach the 50% turnout required for a mandatory legal change is painted as a loss for the prime minister.
Any journalist worthy of the description would have examined the facts on the ground — namely, that the Hungarian constitution is being amended to reflect the referendum — and concluded that Mr. Orbán had scored an historic victory. But being a real journalist is a disqualification for a position with the MSM.
Many thanks to JLH for translating this analysis from the Preußische Allgemeine Zeitung, a regional German paper:
A Slap in the Face for Viktor Orbán?
by Florian Stumfall
October 15, 2016Disagreement over the interpretation and consequences of the Hungarian referendum on EU asylum policy
The participants in the referendum exercised their right to vote. Then EU Parliament President Martin Schulz, and with him all of the Brussels centralists, exulted that the Hungarian referendum on the distribution of asylum seekers among EU states missed the quorum percentage of 50%. Similarly, much of the media spoke of the failing of the referendum in Hungary. And yet, is a participation of only 45% really a slap in the face for Viktor Orbán?
The EU parliamentary president’s interpretation of the result was, “Thanks to the Hungarian people, damage to Europe, that the Hungarian government was willing to accept, has been averted.” Swept under the rug in most analyses of the result is the fact that 98% of those who voted were against the distribution. In absolute numbers, more than three million of about ten million Magyars voted with Prime Minister Orbán — which is more than voted for joining the EU at the time. It seems a stretch to see that as a defeat for Orbán.
The Austrian Minister for Europe, Integration and Foreign Affairs, Sebastian Kurz, added: “It is a mistake to interpret this as Hungary wanting more immigrants. That, I believe, would be a false interpretation.” According to Kurz, the EU’s goal of distributing asylum seekers among members states is “totally unrealistic.” In an interview with a large German Sunday magazine, he made the following calculation: “If, as is now to be foreseen, we continue as before to distribute the refugees among individual countries, we would need 30 years for 160,000 people. Furthermore, the debate on the distribution of refugees by quota can endanger the coherence of the entire European Union.” In fact, the EU is not endangered by the Hungarian referendum, as Schulz maintains, but by the insistence on distribution quotas.
This topic leads us to Austria’s striking rapprochement with Hungary, albeit no longer in a dynastic sense. In Vienna, the Social Democratic Prime Mister, Christian Kern, followed the lead of his Foreign Minister. He acknowledges: “We know that we can not now accomplish the distribution of refugees,” referring to the Visegrad states of Poland. Czechia, Slovakia and Hungary, which have taken a negative attitude toward the asylum problem.
The Austrian Social Democrat sees no problem in Hungary’s failure to reach a quorum, and expects that to have no consequences. “The outcome of the referendum in Hungary will not alter the state of play,” said Kern. That is, neither the EU nor Hungary will alter its policy. Even before the referendum and therefore without knowledge of its result, the Hungarian prime minister had announced that the plebiscite would have legal consequences. In future, the Hungarian legal system, would be aligned with the principle that only the Hungarian parliament (and not the EU) would determine “with whom Hungarians would and would not choose to coexist.”
Orbán has had sufficient aggravation from eurocrats over a long period of time to know that he was risking a basic conflict with Brussels by taking this action. Perhaps he even counted on it. The EU is assuming responsibility for the right to asylum. Orbán is utilizing the helplessness of the EU, which is recognizable in its inability to place the 160,000 immigrants we know of. To assume a responsibility it is incapable of fulfilling weakens Brussels’ political position, and Orbán would not be who he is if he let this opportunity go by.
The French national police force is opening an investigation into an unauthorized demonstration by hundreds of its police officers in Paris. The officers who marched down the Champs Elysées were protesting about being understaffed and under-equipped.
In other news, a Turkish gunman fired indiscriminately into a hair salon in the German town of Dueren, killing one person and seriously wounding several others.
To see the headlines and the articles, click “Continue reading” below.
Thanks to Fjordman, JD, OS, Reader from Chicago, Upananda Brahmachari, and all the other tipsters who sent these in.
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Update: This post (from October 16) was a “sticky” feature at the top for a couple of days. Scroll down for more recent items, including a couple of news feeds.
When Brecht penned his well-known lines in 1953* they were bitter irony, but today they are becoming a bitter reality: the German authorities are in the process of dissolving the people and electing another.
Many thanks to Rembrandt Clancy for translating and annotating this two-part piece from Politically Incorrect. Both parts are included here.
“By now even the most reluctant are beginning to open their eyes. An organized plan exists to destabilize Europe through migratory invasion.”
Roberto de Mattei.
“From a migratory invasion to civil war”,
Corrispondenza Romana: October 5, 2016
Introduction
by Rembrandt Clancy
C. Jahn of Politically Incorrect has made the state-sponsored extirpation of German ethnic and cultural identity in favour of imported ethnicities the subject of his two-part essay, “‘Umvolkung’: Exactly the Right Expression”. The occasion was a tweet by Christian Democratic (CDU) Member of Parliament, Bettina Kudla, in which she reproached her own party leader, Angela Merkel, and the party’s General Secretary, Peter Tauber, for deliberately covering up their policy of Umvolkung, a term which carries the echo, in reverse, of the National Socialist plans for absorption of certain population groups in Eastern Europe. The tweet puts her leaders on notice that she will not support this policy:
BK #Merkel denies it, #Tauber dreams. The #trans-ethnicisation [Umvolkung] of #Germany has long since begun. There is a need for action! [Politically Incorrect. 24 September, 2016]
In the days that followed the tweet, and subsequent to the publication of this essay, the windows of Bettina Kudla’s constituency office were broken and the building façade was smeared with a tar-like substance. Politically Incorrect (4 October 2016) reports that a well known “leftist terror-platform, ‘linksunten.indymeidia’” (indymedia), published a claim of responsibility for the incident:
Yesterday evening [Monday, 3 October 2016] we attacked the office of Bettina Kudla with dye and stones.
With her statements about the alleged “Umvolkung” of Germany Bettina Kudla has placed herself rhetorically alongside her comrades who encourage the racist bands of thugs and arsonists in their crimes and support them with arguments. With her reference to the myth of a population exchange in Germany, she provides legitimation to the murderous thirst for action of the fascists on the street. As a consequence she has become a target for us. Kudla wanted to get involved with the desk criminal Beatrix von Storch, who offered her a switch to the AfD [Alternative für Deutschland]. Meanwhile we have already bid her welcome.
Central to C. Jahn’s essay is the concept of “Umvolkung“. The term refers to the policy of complete structural transformation of an historically and organically matured ‘ethnic people’, a Volk, into another Volk who are the carriers of incompatible values. For the purposes of this essay, a Volk is not a population, a nation, an underclass or a mass; it is ‘a people’ in the sense of “a large community of individuals bound together through a common culture and history (and language)” (Duden). Also, especially given its place in German ethnicity and history, the word “Volk” and its compounds have a much different semantic weighting than its English cognate “folk”.
The prefix “um” (around) is what gives “Umvolkung“ its radical inversion in semantic polarity, the inversion of one Volk into another Volk, therefore also an inversion of values. A Volk is first and foremost the carrier of values and not blood. Now Friedrich Nietzsche’s expression, Umwertung aller Werte, the “transvaluation of all values”, represents his intuition that Western values were about to change into their opposites; for example, sanctity of life transforms into the ‘right’ to die and ‘freedom of choice’ into a euphemism for the right to kill; or in more general terms, the Graeco-Christian Logos of the West changes around (um), or more precisely, returns back to collectivism (Islam and neo-Bolshevism) — a revolutionary, albeit regressive anti-Logos. By virtue of the intimate connection between Volk and Werte, the transvaluation (Umwertung) of all values leads ultimately to a trans-ethnicisation (Umvolkung) of the people themselves.
We follow the established practice of rendering Nietzsche’s “Umwertung“ as “transvaluation” and translate ‘Umvolkung” as ‘trans-ethnicisation’.
“Umvolkung” — Exactly the Right Expression!
Part I
The political establishment is giving the CDU parliamentary representative Bettina Kudla a grilling: Kudla used the word “Umvolkung“ [trans-ethnicisation] to describe the Merkel settlement policy. This word is said to have already been used in the Third Reich. Even if this claim should be true (the proof is still pending),[1] the regime has always stated quite openly that the settlement policy is a politically desired erection of new ethnic structures in Germany (“enrichment”, “as opposed to inbreeding”). How is one to describe this policy of a deliberate ethnic reconstruction [ethnischen Umbau]? A series for Politically Incorrect in two parts.
by C. Jahn
Original German Source: Politically Incorrect
Translated by: Rembrandt Clancy
29 September, 2016
In these times of our Multicoloured Republic [Bunten Republik], the regime has always justified its ethnic settlement policy with the advice that more Turks, more Arabs and more Nigerians constitute more “enrichment” for Germany (“these people with their joy of life…”) [Maria Böhmer, CDU, Minister of State in the Foreign Office]. The regime has always communicated very clearly in word and deed that the policy of a total ethnic restructuring (Umstrukturierung) is intended; Germany is going to be ethnically and culturally transformed. While it is true that this process of total ethnic restructuring has attained a new, much more radical dimension under Merkel, it is, nevertheless, on the whole part of a longstanding political continuity.
What term, therefore, lends itself most suitably to this deliberately precipitated, total ethnic restructuring?
First and foremost, this is clearly a classical settlement policy. New ethnic groups are settled in the traditional settlement area of another ethnic group in order to accomplish specific political objectives. These objectives could be anything, depending on the political leaning. The settlement policy of Stalinism aimed at the destruction of established, organised ethnic structures within the framework of the fight against all forms of opposition. The planned (but never implemented) settlement policy of the Third Reich aimed at a gradual — at first almost unnoticed — but steadily increasing dissolution of East European ethnic groups [Völker] into the Germanic stock. Even outside of Western Europe today, the implementation of policy objectives drives ethnic settlement policies in many other parts of the world — any search engine is suited to offer additional assistance. Also the policy of our Multicoloured Republicans in Berlin aims to achieve its political objectives through the settlement of new ethnic groups. Assuming they have good intentions, Germany is to be “enriched” through “joy of life”, and Germans are to “learn” to understand other cultures and thereby “break down prejudices”, hence a kind of educational programme. Assuming they have bad intentions, they first wish to marginalise Germans to the status of an ethnic minority, then deprive them of all special protections which they enjoy in their own country and ultimately exterminate them through pogroms, civil war or other orgies of the violent type. Since one cannot read the minds of the Multicoloured Republicans, let us not speculate further here about their ultimate political objectives. But this changes nothing about the fact that the means of implementing these objectives — whatever that might be — is very much a classical settlement policy which is carried out pro forma through deliberate abuse of asylum law.
What distinguishes this settlement policy of the Multicoloured Republicans of today from the settlement policy of the Third Reich?
The main criticism the regime has against Representative Kudla follows a twofold thrust. On the one hand, they fault Kudla for using a term which they claim had been standard in the propaganda language of the Third Reich. But even if this word had already been in use in some of the addresses or speeches of the Third Reich, in comparison with several other terms out of the same period, the word “Umvolkung” certainly falls within the realm of general knowledge. Even if some National Socialist ideologues are supposed to have used this word, it fell completely into oblivion after 1945. It has surfaced since then for the first time in several PI articles starting in 2015, subsequent to Merkel’s refugee putsch; and Akif Pirinçci took it up in 2016 as the title of a book.[2] One requires little imagination to come up with an expression like “Umvolkung” [trans-ethnicisation] when faced with the Merkel-madness. It is therefore quite accurate from the standpoint of language history to distinguish between the mostly forgotten National Socialist ideological language describing the settlement policy for Eastern Europe (insofar as the claim is true and few historians trust it)[1] and its recreation in 2015. There is no historical-linguistic continuity between the two concepts.
On the other hand, the regime reproaches Kudla for wrongly applying the word “Umvolkung” specifically to the Merkel settlement policy. The criticism runs as follows:
The German interior minister is making a belated effort to crack down on criminal and/or undesirable elements among the “refugees” who have arrived in Germany in the last few years. Common sense, rationality, and sanity would have indicated that the best way to keep Germany free of such people would have been to not invite them in in the first place. But common sense, rationality and sanity seem to be an impediment to one’s political career in Modern Multicultural Germany.
Many thanks to Ava Lon for this translation from Der Nordkurier:
De Maizière plans deportations without warning
14 October 2016
With a clear tightening of the residence law, the Federal Ministry of the Interior wants to increase the pressure on all foreigners who thwart their deportation.
A spokeswoman confirmed that the draft of a “law for the better enforcement of the departure obligation” had gone to the ministries a week ago for a vote.
Among other things, the draft directive foresees that in the future the persons concerned should no longer be informed of planned deportations. The so-called departure custody is to be extended from up to four days to a maximum of fourteen days.
In addition, the Ministry intends to extend the list of grounds for deportation. In the future, those detained will be not only aliens who are liable to leave the country, but who are at risk of “escape”, but also those who have been convicted of a criminal offense, and people “who constitute a considerable danger to public safety”.
The proposal also introduces a kind of second-class tolerance. The “certificate of enforceable departure obligation” will apply to all those who do not participate in the clarification of their nationality or in obtaining of a passport, and also to foreigners whose country of origin deliberately delays the issuing of the necessary documents. Those who are classified as such, should not be given access to integration classes or institutions of further education. Possibilities that existed until now for those who are being tolerated until they get a legal residence permit would no longer be considered for this group.
The proposals are part of a comprehensive security package announced by the Federal Minister of the Interior Thomas de Maizière (CDU) in August. According to the Federal Government, at the end of August 210,296 foreigners who were obliged to leave Germany were staying in Germany. About three quarters of them had a toleration, for instance because of illness or because they had no passport.
Pro asylum appealed to the SPD to stop the law draft. It was “inhuman” and disproportionate. The German Attorneys-at-Law spoke of a “quick legislative shot, which may have fatal consequences”. The chairman of the DAV Asylum Committee, Gisela Seidler, said: “The idea of denying toleration when the person concerned no longer has a passport and the state of origin refuses a passport is completely absurd.” The idea that the behavior of the home country is attributable to the person concerned is legally incomprehensible.
Ulla Jelpke, the spokesman for the left-wing Bundestag, spoke of a “humanitarian declaration of bankruptcy.” She said that the proposed measures “constitute a form of psychological terror aimed at demoralizing the fugitives” after which they are to be deported as quickly as possible. Volker Beck (Greens) warned: “Whoever limits work opportunities, educational opportunities, and long-term prospects will not curb crime, but rather promote it.”
You just can’t make this stuff up: “Swedes” who made hijra to Syria to fight in the jihad for the Islamic State are allowed to avail themselves of welfare benefits when they return to Sweden — to help them “reintegrate” into Swedish society.
Many thanks to Tania G. for translating this article published today at Fria Tider:
Confirmed: IS Terrorists get a free driver’s license and housing in Sweden
Those Muslims returning to Sweden after fighting for the terrorist organization Islamic state in the Middle East are offered taxpayer-financed driver’s education, free housing and even debt forgiveness.
Swedish Radio (SR) spoke to Christoffer Carlsson, the author of a report at the National Coordination Against Violent Extremism, who comes up with examples of how the terrorists can be “reintegrated” into Swedish society with the help of state funding.
“It’s simply a social, economic and material question. It you have to reintegrate back into the job market, you may need to have a driving license, debt forgiveness and housing. When people leave (IS?), they want to start something else, and if they don’t have the resources to do it, it will be difficult to make it a reality,” says Christoffer Carlsson.
Without that kind of help at the Swedish taxpayers’ expense, there is a risk that terrorists “won’t manage” to leave the Muslim extremist environment, stresses Carlsson.
Anna Sjöstrand, the municipal coordinator against violent extremism in Lund, also participates in SR’s reports. She points out that one cannot deny the terrorists tax benefits merely because they made a “wrong choice”.
“We cannot just say that because you made a wrong choice, you have no right to come back and live in our society,” says Anna Sjöstrand to SR.
The essay below is essentially a follow-up to previous essays by the German commentator Anabel Schunke (see three previous translations of her pieces here, here, and here .
Many thanks to Nash Montana for this translation from Roland Tichy’s website:
I am worthless.
By Anabel Schunke
Worthless in a human sense. In reference to my origin. My worldview. My simple opinion. Because I am German. Completely without a politically correct talkshow-worthy migration background and without religion that supposedly constantly discriminates and I therefore get discriminated against.
But not worthless with respect to my money. Because the Left’s dream of Multiculturalism needs to be financed, after all. I am good enough for that, but I am fed up with only being good enough when my tax money is demanded for those who allegedly enrich us. They who then often not only aren’t grateful towards us, but treat us as second-class citizens, like idiots who can be fleeced. They who do not enrich us, but themselves.
We are Germans.
Just saying this sentence out loud in our current climate of political correctness sounds incredibly weird. Our opinion, if it isn’t multiculti, does not count. People who could express this opinion for people like me either aren’t heard at all or are dissed for being right-wing populists. It’s almost like we don’t want a voice speaking up for us anymore, and if we do, then only curious odd coots so that we can turn them into objects of ridicule. We’re not supposed to think that we are many. That it is OK that so many think that way, and that there are more sensible, reasonable people among us Germans than not. Instead we have to be lectured. By the hijab activists Aiman Mazyek and Lamya Kador. We have to be told what our obligation to provide is, and what racist a******s we really are.
And I am woman.
…Whose freedom and liberty fell victim to the refugee crisis first. It is not always obvious, a lot of times it’s extremely subtle. For instance, when I got pepper spray after the events in Cologne, or when other women tell me how they avoid certain clothes or places. There are many of us who go into inner emigration because we just have been raised to be loving and nice. And because we are insecure about our political opinion. Because we want to please and be liked, and because politics is so horribly polarizing. But when is the moment reached when one has to strike back and fight for one’s own rights, which have been taken for granted for so long? When do I have to leave the political commonplace and take a position? Now. Exactly now. The selling out of our freedom has long ago started, and we are the first that have been affected by this. We’re practically the seismograph for everything that is still coming at us. But I don’t want to be a seismograph, and I don’t want and I never wanted to be nice and loving and please everybody. I also want to be worth something.
I am a cop.
Nobody cares when I put myself out there day in and day out. When I get pounded with bottles and rocks by the Antifa, it’s the police who are accused of brutality. When our red-green political leadership budget-cut the police down to nothing, we are the ones who are blamed when not enough of us are present in Cologne. We experience the consequences of Merkel’s refugee politics every single day at point-blank range. We are the ones who are completely powerless against the African drug dealers because here in Germany it’s easier to hold a parking offender accountable than a criminal. We have to catch escaped terror suspects we never encountered before Merkel let them into the country. We don’t get a federal cross for merit for our work. That medal is handed out to the Syrians that caught him [reference to the El-Bakr case]. Because even with the federal cross for merit, it’s not about the actual work anymore, but about the “good deed” behind it. What counts is the message of multicultural enrichment even as our daily experiences tell us something completely different.
According to Wikileaks, Julian Assange’s access to the Internet has been cut off by a “state actor”. Some reports say the Ecuadoran government cut him off under pressure from an unidentified foreign government. Mr. Assange has claimed asylum in the Ecuadoran embassy in London since 2012.
In possibly unrelated news, RT says that NatWest bank has closed all its accounts in the UK, without giving a reason for the action. The RT news agency is owned and funded by the Russian state.
To see the headlines and the articles, click “Continue reading” below.
Thanks to Dean, Fjordman, JD, Matt Bracken, Nick, Reader from Chicago, and all the other tipsters who sent these in.
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Asia Bibi is a Pakistani Christian who was arrested for “blasphemy” and eventually sentenced to death. It’s hard to believe, but it’s now been seven years since she was first arrested. We’ve been following her case since she was first jailed back in 2009. She’s been languishing on death row ever since, with the final disposition of her case repeatedly postponed.
It’s a sensitive problem for the Pakistani government — hanging Ms. Bibi would be enough to cause international outrage, even with the anti-Christian President Hussein in the White House. But releasing her would cause a firestorm among the “Islamists” who form an increasingly powerful mob in Pakistan. So the judicial system keeps putting off the execution.
She was offered the chance to convert to Islam, but refused. One shudders to think of what she has endured for seven years, as a female in a Pakistani prison. That’s a woman whose faith is strong.
Below are excerpts from an article on the latest postponement of Asia Bibi’s case, as published by Christian Today:
Why Was Asia Bibi’s Death Penalty Appeal Postponed, And What Happens Next?
Asia Bibi, the Christian mother sentenced to death in Pakistan for blasphemy, today had her final appeal postponed after years of languishing on death row.
The Supreme Court judge, Justice Iqbal Hameed ur Rehman, withdrew from the case because he had also overseen the appeal of Mumtaz Qadri, the man charged with — and eventually hanged for — the murder of Governor of Punjab Salman Taseer in 2011, who had publicly defended Bibi.
“I was a part of the bench that was hearing the case of Salman Taseer, and this case is related to that,” Rehman told the court in Islamabad.
He did not specify a new date for the hearing, and Bibi was taken back to jail.
So what happens next?
Bibi was first jailed in 2009 and sentenced to death in November the following year for allegedly blaspheming against the Prophet Muhammad during an argument with fellow farm workers. After her colleagues refused to drink from a cup used by Bibi because she was a Christian and therefore deemed ‘unclean’, she reportedly said: “I believe in my religion and in Jesus Christ, who died on the cross for the sins of mankind. What did your Prophet Muhammad ever do to save mankind?”
She was later pulled before a judge and convicted of blasphemy — a charge she has consistently denied. She was last year moved to solitary confinement in her prison in Multan, eastern Pakistan, over fears she may be attacked by vigilantes, and has been allowed to cook her own food for fear she will be poisoned.
Andrew Boyd of persecution charity Release International said today in the wake of the appeal’s adjournment that it was unlikely Bibi’s case would move forward quickly.
“She’s been there [on death row] for six years,” he told Christian Today, and her case is the most-high profile blasphemy case in Pakistan — arguably the most notorious the country has ever seen. More than 1,300 people have been charged with blasphemy in Pakistan since 1987, a disproportionate number of them Christians, but Bibi’s case has captured world-wide attention, with international calls for her release and an end to Pakistan’s repressive blasphemy laws.
In Pakistan, however, Muslim hardliners are desperate for her to be hanged.
As the following video shows, photoshopping German politicians’ faces into old photos can get you in legal trouble. According to the notes accompanying the video:
Dubravko Mandic — a member of the AfD (Alternative für Deutschland, Alternative for Germany), and among other things in the party, the Vice-President of the AfD State Court of Arbitration in Baden-Württemberg — is being investigated on suspicion of defamation. Just under a year ago he posted a picture on Facebook of the Nuremberg trial with mounted heads of well-known German politicians as the National Socialists’ main war criminals. Claudia Roth, Cem Özdemir, Anton Hofreiter, Ralf Stegner, and Joschka Fischer then filed charges against Mandic (who is a lawyer) for defamation [libel].
Many thanks to Ava Lon for the translation, and to Vlad Tepes for the subtitling:
Transcript:
Flying the flag of the Islamic State is now legal in Sweden. A Syrian migrant had been investigated for hate speech over his display of the ISIS flag, but the prosecutor determined that since the man is declaring his animosity towards everyone in the world, he is not being discriminatory, and therefore the flag does not rise to the level of “hate speech”.
In other Scandinavian news, crime committed by organized migrant gangs in Denmark has doubled in the past six years.
To see the headlines and the articles, click “Continue reading” below.
Thanks to Fjordman, JD, LP, MC, Reader from Chicago, 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.
