Gates of Vienna News Feed 3/31/2018

Austria has handed down fifty fines to women for violating the burka ban since the law came into effect last October. Most of the charges were issued in November and December; after that, violations tapered off.

In other news, a 25-year-old Moroccan “youth” was arrested in Italy on suspicion of raping a teenage girl on a train in Bologna.

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

Thanks to Charles Low, Insubria, JD, MC, Reader from Chicago, Upananda Brahmachari, and all the other tipsters who sent these in.

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

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

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The Planet of the Skunks

Peace reigns once more at Schloss Bodissey. But it sure took a pile o’ money to secure the borders and enforce The Peace.

Our readers may remember that our crawl space was breached by various wild critters. It could have been worse — at least our invaders were small. They also simply holed up for a bit, rather than hibernated.

We posted about all this foofaraw last November, as you may recall. That was when we became aware of the extent and seriousness of our skunk problem.

This mess began earlier than we knew: a woodchuck (a.k.a. groundhog, and known in the local dialect as a “whistle pig”) dug the hole under the footer, running from under the side porch into the crawl space. Had a skunk not come in through the hole made by the woodchuck, we might have gone on for quite a while without knowing about that hole underneath the foundation. But once the skunk joined the party and started feeling a little anxious, the upper part of the house began to fill with noxious fumes.

The B was upstairs in his office when the odor hit, while I was directly above the skunk spray. Suddenly awakened from a sound sleep, my first incoherent thought was that there was a fire in the kitchen, that somehow rotten garlic bulbs, dirty gym socks, and coffee grounds were blazing away on the gas range. But the kitchen was quiet and empty. Evidently the smell had yet to make its way to the stairs leading to the B’s study, so I did what I customarily do in such situations: I went to the bottom of his stairs and yelled “Nnneeeddd!”, which always sends him hurtling down the steps. At that moment he could smell it he identified it: skunks in the crawl space.

Our question at that point was whether the skunk’s residence was temporary, or whether this was momma skunk who had a den of babies to care for under our house. The second question was how to make sure she left and didn’t return.

So began our saga of animal-proofing our underneath. We called an exterminator, but found out he only did post-damage clean-up; the fellows who could capture whatever was under there had to be registered. Wouldn’t you know it: another government regulation! But he referred us to the man who came out to make sure he captured any stray wildlife under our house. If it was a momma, he had a trap. And if there were babies, he’d be going in to get them. He and his mean came and set up the trap, showing the Baron how to check it, and also came by every morning to check the trap themselves.

The skunk must have lit out for Dodge that first night, because the only critter he caught was a feral cat, one so hungry it ate the whole peanut butter sandwich in the trap — three or four nights in a row. The final trap — a “cage trap” — caught the poor creature. That morning the man opened the trap door and the feline made a beeline for our woods.

Thus concluded the job of the skunk-trappers. Enter the Crawl Space Wizard.

The contractor we had called first returned to the scene of the crime. He and his crew inspected the area underneath the house and declared it empty, though they said the woodchuck hole had been there under the steps for a good while, since there was much evident damage to insulation and our HVAC ductwork. The latter had been torn in various places. Plus a lot of urine and feces — but the less said about that, the better.

The contractor, who specializes in sealing crawl spaces, suggested that we opt for a full encapsulation. That meant:

1.   Cleaning out the old plastic liners and removing roots and various detritus before leveling the ground surface.
2.   Removing the insulation, both the skunk-compromised parts and the undamaged parts.
3.   Cleaning the mold that had formed on the wood above the insulation.
4.   Treating the joists and the floor to prevent new mold from forming.
5.   Replacing the damaged ductwork.
6.   Repairing and improving the shoddy, makeshift parts of the cinderblock walls that enclose the old part of the house.
7.   Lining all of the walls with thick foam insulating panels, with no gaps.
8.   Sealing the floor and the support pillars with two-mil vinyl sheets, and burying animal-proof wire baffles underground along the walls.
9.   Installing lighting, new crawl space doors, and a new dehumidifier.
 

We signed the contract. Work got underway in mid-January. During the worst weather of the year, which delayed everything.

Then, when they got to the front part of the house, they discovered that the part that had been jacked up 25 years ago needed to be jacked up again — the old cinderblocks had settled into the dirt, and in some places they no longer made contact with the joist they ostensibly supported. So we had to agree to an amendment, which meant additional expense.

However, as you can see from the photos below, the final result (completed in late February) sure was worth it:

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A Culture-Enriching Arsonist in Leipzig

The following report by Egri Nök was published earlier at Vlad Tepes in a slightly different form.

Germany: Syrian Sets Fire to House, 17 Wounded, 1 Dead

by Egri Nök

A Syrian set fire to an apartment house in Leipzig in the early morning hours of Good Friday, killing one person and wounding 17. A local fire engine enthusiast, Einsatzfahrten Leipzig, filmed the following footage:

This next video by Bild shows the two who are trapped on the roof jump down into the firefighters’ cushion:

Bild report 16 wounded, two of them critically, and one dead. 34 people lost their home.

When police searched the house on Friday afternoon with a thermographic camera, they found what they initially thought was a male body. But the autopsy later revealed that it was a female body. Police also found several dead pets in the house.

Police confirm that the arsonist is a 32-year-old Syrian, a resident of that very house, and that he will be charged with arson and murder.

Visit Vlad’s place to see the photos to go with these captions:

#1:   Residents locked on the roof flash a torch to catch the firefighters’ attention.
#2:   A woman hands a toddler to firefighters.
#3:   The wounded are taken to hospitals.
#4:   Deceased pets lie in the street after the fire.
 

A Tongue-Lashing for the Gutmenschen

The following video was broadcast by Norddeutscher Rundfunk, the state TV service in northern Germany. I was surprised that they let this benighted WAYCIST voice his views on the air. Maybe they showed the footage as an object lesson to their viewers: “See, this is what an awful, intolerant xenophobe looks like!”

I wonder if airing it had the intended effect…

Many thanks to Ava Lon for the translation, and to Vlad Tepes for the subtitling:

Video transcript:

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Vehicular Jihad in Pompeii

A couple of days ago we posted an item in the news feed about a “youth” who tried to ram his car into worshippers at a church in Italy. The article below was published in the Italian press, which means it gives more details about the Islamic nature of the attempted jihad attack than one would see in the media in Northern and Western Europe.

Many thanks to FouseSquawk for translating this article from Corriere del Mezzogiorno:

Algerian plows his car at Sanctuary of Pompeii. “I did it in the name of Allah”

Under investigation for terrorism, he crashed against the barriers put up in defense of the church. To the audience, he recited a litany in Arabic. The man is 22 years old, expelled from France and from the police headquarters in Cagliari, but he was still in our country.

He proceeded in the wrong direction on Via Bartolo Longo, crowded with pedestrians; then he crashed against the cement flower pots laid out to protect the Basilica of Pompeii from terrorist attacks. The Algerian Othman Jridi (22) arrived in Italy after being expelled from France, expelled again by the police headquarters in Cagliari, but remained in our country and was caught by city police after a brief chase. The presiding judge of Torre Annunziata, Fernanda Iannone — an international terrorism expert and the author of a dissertation on foreign terrorist fighters — not only validated the arrest, but receiving the request from the prosecuting magistrate, also ordered precautionary custody in prison. For the crimes charged (auto theft and false declarations to a public official), the Algerian was processed in a direct hearing: The lawyer who is assisting him, Enrica Visconti, requested the abbreviation, and therefore in the face of a request of four years and one month on the part of the prosecuting magistrate, Jridi was sentenced to two and a half years, a penalty very severe, however, relative to the low-level offense committed by the accused. The files have been sent to the anti-terrorism pool of the Naples prosecutor for the necessary intelligence.

Extreme Danger

The defendant could have been given house arrest (the law provides for lower sentences at three years), but the judge decided differently. Too many elements were cited as evidence against him. All in all, argued the magistrate, it is necessary to realize the extreme danger posed by the actions of the defendant, and the method (attack upon a pedestrian zone, a square normally frequented by hundreds of persons, as well as the thousands of pilgrims on festival days), the location (a square in front of the sanctuary of the Madonna of Pompeii) the personality (an alien of Algerian nationality, illegally in Italian territory, expelled from French territory), the psychological-physical condition of the person (who had consumed by his own admission drugs and psychotropic substances) which provoke episodes of terrorist attacks. Not only that: The young Algerian in the course of the hearing asserted that he was not in a condition to know why he had done that deed, if not to feel closer to Allah, which would have been made easier by taking a drug.

The Objective

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Gates of Vienna News Feed 3/30/2018

In a federal courtroom in Orlando today Noor Salman was acquitted of supporting terrorism and obstructing justice. Ms. Salman is the widow of Omar Mateen, who slaughtered 49 people in the Pulse nightclub in Orlando back in 2016.

In other news, an illegal Algerian immigrant in Italy was arrested on terrorism charges after he attempted to ram his car into worshippers in front of a church. His attack was thwarted by the concrete bollards protecting the church.

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

Thanks to Caroline Glick, Charles Low, Insubria, Reader from Chicago, Srdja Trifkovic, SS, and all the other tipsters who sent these in.

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

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

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That Omnipresent White Hegemony

Ever since mass advertising was first invented, the obvious way to sell stuff to men has been to use images or footage of attractive women in advertisements. Preferably women wearing the sort of clothing that makes their appurtenances visible.

It’s the same principle used by that Russian TV station that features naked young women reading the news — a guaranteed way to make the average male viewer well-informed on current affairs in Russia.

Back in the 1950s, during the heyday of mass advertising psychology (see the The Hidden Persuaders by Vance Packard for a period piece from the time), researchers discovered that the converse was not true — you couldn’t sell stuff to women by using handsome men in your advertising. Paradoxically, the way to sell stuff to women was to use the same strategy used on men: put sexy women in the ads. I don’t know if anyone ever figured out why this works, but it does.

I bring all this up because it seems a similar process is at work in Pakistan, except this time the marketing strategy involves race, and not sex.

The subset of the Powers That Be that controls the backbone of the Internet has managed to throttle most of the spam traffic in the last year or two. For some reason, most of the remaining email spam that gets through the filters — and especially the bandwidth-hogging emails with large images — originates in Pakistan. Fortunately for us, our spam filter manages to catch most of these messages so that our inbox remains uncluttered with trash. However, sometimes I amuse myself by opening the spam folder and browsing through the Pakistani spam.

I’ve noticed that in many instances Pakistani spammers use images of people who are distinctly not ethnic Pakistanis to sell stuff to people in Pakistan. The most blatant of such ads, which showed up in the spam filter this morning, contained this image:

The accompanying ad (in English, the common tongue of the Indian subcontinent) was trying to sell school management software. It was plainly targeting potential customers inside Pakistan, and not abroad — it listed an address in Karachi, a phone number in Pakistan, and an email address with a .pk domain. Yet they used cute little honky kids to pitch the product to their perceived customer base.

Pakistan is not the only “brown” country to use images of white people in domestic advertising. Whiteness is a big seller for Indians, too — and skin-whitening products are a major industry in India. For some reason white people are considered attractive and optimal to people in India. I suppose you could blame it on their history of oppression by the British, a legacy of colonialism. But the British have been gone for more than seventy years, and are widely disliked in India. So why is whiteness an ideal?

And non-whites in other parts of the world exhibit similar preferences, as expressed in advertising and popular culture. Given the well-known public hatred of whitey, why does this happen?

I don’t know the answer to these questions, and the topic is so hobbled by political correctness that reasonable, unbiased research into its causes is all but impossible. But the phenomenon is clearly visible: while Western universities are busy deconstructing whiteness and reviling “white privilege”, the Third World is voting for whiteness with its pop culture.

Go figure.

Good Friday 2018

This is from 1950. A cultural artifact, for sure:

This hymn may be the first crossover to the mainstream from a long tradition of black Christian music. Is it the best or most authentic version? Lord, no; it’s white bread all the way through. However, as history, it’s worth a listen especially when you get to the end when Mr Waring uncomfortably shills for his sponsor.

On Good Friday 2018, Palestinians are storming the borders of Israel. As it happens, there is a confluence here: Passover begins at sundown, Christians observe Good Friday, and PoorPalis go on a rampage. Hmmm…maybe they didn’t want to be left out so they performed the ritual they know best.

“We Want Everyone to See What Was Done to Our Daughter”

The following report by Egri Nök was published last night at Vlad Tepes in a slightly different form.

“We want everyone to see what was done to our daughter”

by Egri Nök

Germany — Vivien, 24, was stabbed down and critically wounded by a 17-year-old Syrian refugee last Saturday, when she and her boyfriend were shopping for groceries in the small German town of Burgwedel (see the report Bloody Weekend — Knife Attacks All Over Germany). She had to undergo emergency surgery and remained in critical condition.

The prosecution has opened an investigation against the boy for battery. His family, who came to Germany as refugees in 2013, issued a statement that they are sorry about the incident, however, “they want it investigated how it might have come to him stabbing out.”

Vivien’s parents approached the newspaper Bild Zeitung. An original translation:

Vivien (24) was stabbed down and critically injured by a 17-year-old Syrian refugee when she was shopping.

The Parents of Knife-Victim Vivien (24) Reproach:

“Everyone should see what was done to our daughter”

The 24-year-old woke up from her coma — this is what her lawyer and her boyfriend have to say.

by Mirko Voltmer
March 29, 2018

Hannover — Sensors watch over her somatic functions, tubes sustain Vivien K. (24). The young woman is in intensive care — she was the victim of a knife-stabber after an argument in the supermarket.

“We want nothing more than for our daughter to get well again. But we also want everyone to see what happened to her,” say Vivien’s parents.

The doctors had to remove her spleen, and part of her pancreas. Her ribs are broken. Four days after the knife attack, on Wednesday, she woke from the artificial coma.

Flashback: On Saturday, she and her boyfriend Domenic K. (25) were shopping a supermarket in Burgwedel (Lower Saxony), and happened upon two cousins (13, 14), who were allegedly wrestling. Vivien, who is a shop assistant, asked the two to stop it.

Outside, the couple met the two again, with a brother (17). He stabbed Vivien into the belly with a jackknife. Domenic: “I thank God that Vivien is still alive. The doctors said two centimeters made the difference between life and death.”

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Gates of Vienna News Feed 3/29/2018

Dozens of “youths” brawled with machetes on the streets of Duisburg in Germany, and attacked police with metal pipes when confronted. At least 50 people were arrested.

In other news, an unemployed illegal immigrant who cheated the British government out of £60,000 ($84,000) in benefits has been sentenced to five years in prison.

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

Thanks to Charles Low, Insubria, JD, MC, Reader from Chicago, SS, Upananda Brahmachari, and all the other tipsters who sent these in.

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

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

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Egypt’s Election: All Votes Will go to Al-Sisi

The following account by Ashraf Ramelah was written earlier this week, before the conclusion of the Egyptian presidential election.

Egypt’s election: All votes will go to Al-Sisi

by Ashraf Ramelah

Egypt is holding its presidential election over several days this week, ending on March 28. President Abdul Fatah Al-Sisi is running for re-election after four years of his first term. There is one opposing candidate from the Tomorrow Party who has vowed to cast his vote for the president and encourages all Egyptians to do the same.

The ballots will be counted by the Election Commission as usual with the political parties observing. The president is an independent candidate of the military without a political party. However, the military will be absent from the process because constitutionally it cannot be a part of civilian elections.

With the outcome already determined, Egyptians view the election as a comedic performance mainly because it is too painful to take seriously. Any real opposition candidates to the president have been orchestrated out of the process by the Al-Sisi government in the past months. (See my article entitled: “Egypt: Al-Sisi’s pre-election maneuvers guarantee his March victory”).

State-sponsored media rave about the popularity of Al-Sisi and show pictures of Egyptians endorsing him with his campaign slogan of “build it.” But certain facts belie such reports. For instance, the media is pressuring the electorate to go out and vote by stressing it as the sacred duty of every citizen. Guilt infliction would not be necessary if a highly popular, reformist incumbent were running.

Christian clergy and Muslim imams are threatening the populace with the fate of hell for those who do not go to the voting polls, while the courts threaten non-voters with monetary fines. State employees are told by their managers that they will receive punishments for misconduct if they are absent from the performance of their electoral duty.

Meanwhile, Orthodox churches in the Egyptian diaspora around the world are arranging buses to haul church-goers to offices of the Egyptian Consulate to cast their vote for Al-Sisi. This follows the directive of Pope Tawadros II, an advocate for the president, when last week he announced plainly that, “It is the obligation and duty of every person to vote.” A low turnout at the polls would bring embarrassment to the president and must be avoided at all costs.

Complacency is being combated by the state, church and mosque, but the anger boiling underneath the surface of the ersatz conformity is an even bigger threat to Al-Sisi, and can’t be dealt with as easily by the regime whose appearance must remain “democratic.” Calling the election a farce, the Civil Democratic Movement has risen up to boycott it. Analysts are citing it as the object of the president’s anger and the reason for the regime’s pressure upon voters across the country.

Anger in general toward Al-Sisi’s failed record is what led the regime in the first place to eliminate risk by clearing the ballot of opposition. The other candidates presumably represented forces so insidious to the country and the welfare of the citizenry that Al-Sisi waited until they threatened his position as president to deal with their lurking presence.

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The Halal Slaughter of Colonel Beltrame in Trèbes

Last Friday an armed mujahid killed three people and took hostages in the town of Trèbes in southern France. Before he was eventually shot and killed by police, Arnaud Beltrame, a colonel in the gendarmerie, offered himself in exchange for the last of the hostages. The mujahid then stabbed Col. Beltrame, and the courageous officer later died of his wounds in the hospital.

The manner in which Col. Beltrame was killed has been suppressed by the news media both inside and outside of France. News stories reported that he was “stabbed”, and some went so far as to add “in the neck”. But the gendarme was in fact slaughtered like a beast in halal fashion: his throat was slit, as required by the Koran.

Below is the first part of an article by Riposte Laïque, published on 26 March 2018 by Jeanne Bourdillon. Many thanks to Oz-Rita for the translation:

Colonel Beltrame was slaughtered like a sheep at the Feast of Eid!

We learn, without surprise, alas, that Colonel [Arnaud] Beltrame died with his throat slit, even if it is a phrase that newspapers are reluctant to use. We had received this tweet from one of our readers on Friday evening, but we hesitated to make it public, fearing a false rumour. Mistake.

A direct reply to [Gérard] Collomb [Minister of the Interior], who lied before the cameras:

Translation of the tweet by Viviane (meanwhile deleted by Twitter):

“Minister, stop lying to the people with the help of the media. My surgeon brother is the one who received Lieutenant Colonel Beltrame yesterday at the hospital in Carcassonne; he confirmed to me this morning that in reality, he was EGORGÉ [translator: had his throat slit].”

Riposte Laïque then link to an article, dated March 25 2018, from the French Daily Le Parisien, whose headline reads:

Attack in the Aude: Constable Arnaud Beltrame died stabbed in the neck

The autopsy of the gendarme who on Friday substituted himself for the last hostage in the Super U of Trèbes (Aude) revealed fatal knife injuries. The officer was also shot.

The conditions surrounding the death of Lieutenant-Colonel Arnaud Beltrame are becoming clearer. The autopsy on the body of the gendarmerie officer revealed “deadly stab wounds” in the neck, according to corroborating sources. This outstanding officer, whose heroic action was hailed by the head of state, is said to have died from stab wounds to the throat.

He was also wounded by gunfire. His killer, Radouane Lakdim, a 25-year-old jihadist who rushed into the store after shooting motorists and a CRS police officer, was armed with a dagger and a 7.65 small-arms pistol. The constable’s service weapon, a 9 mm calibre, was also found near his body. We still don’t know the exact order of the stab wounds and the shots. The shots provoked the intervention of the GIGN, which, in response, killed the attacker.

At various points inside the store Lakdim had arranged improvised explosives, connected to a triggering system, but they did not detonate.

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Gates of Vienna News Feed 3/28/2018

The rate of fatal violent crimes in Sweden has risen to a level that is the highest since records have been kept. The Swedish government’s criminal statistics bureau reports that the rape rate is also continuing to rise.

In other news, the Canadian right-wing activist Lauren Southern has been permanently banned from entering the UK.

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

Thanks to Caroline Glick, Charles Low, Dean, LS, MC, Reader from Chicago, Red Mike, SS, 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.

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