Imran Firasat is a Pakistani ex-Muslim who collaborated with Terry Jones on the movie The Innocent Prophet (watch it here). The Spanish government recently revoked his status as a political refugee in Spain, and he is due to be deported to Pakistan, where he will face the death penalty for blasphemy. There is currently a push to persuade the Canadian government to grant him and his family political asylum.

Mr. Firasat was interviewed recently on Alerta Digital TV. Many thanks to our Spanish correspondent Hermes for the translation, and to Vlad Tepes for the subtitling:

Transcript:

The news feed was delayed overnight by a power outage, which occurred just before midnight and continued for several hours. There was no apparent reason for it — the temperature was above freezing; there was no precipitation and no wind. The ways of Grid are mysterious.

I’ve backdated the post to make it January 12.

Of interest is the French military intervention in Mali, which aims to prevent an Al Qaeda state from forming in the northern half of the country. France has already lost two helicopters in the operation.

To see the headlines and the articles, open the full news post.

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

Commenters are advised to leave their comments at this post (rather than with the news articles) so that they are more easily accessible.

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It’s always refreshing to hear the plain truth spoken plainly, and we are fortunate that Muslim spokesman are so often eager to speak the plain truth about Islam. Despite the earnest desire on the part of the leftist establishment for a different account of Islamic teachings — one that would dovetail neatly with their own Progressive worldview — Muslims themselves repeatedly insist that they follow what is written in their scriptures and recorded in their traditions.

Our Norwegian correspondent The Observer has translated a video clip from the Norwegian state broadcaster NRK concerning the planned Al-Haddad seminar in Oslo this weekend hosted by Islam.net. He sends this introductory note:

It’s a debate between Audun Lysbakken, the leader of SV (Socialist left), and Fahad Qureishi, the leader of Islam.net. In the clip Qureishi dismisses Lysbakken’s naïve claim that the majority of Muslims don’t agree with the views that Al-Haddad espouses, and he does so in a very clear and concise manner.

The discussion is interesting because it shatters the view held by many leftist Norwegians that ‘radical’ Muslims are bearded fanatics who salivate and scream their lungs out at rallies and rant at obscure sites on the internet. Fahad Qureishi, the leader of Islam.net, is very calm. In this interview he delivers a clear and unambiguous message that can’t really be misinterpreted: there is only one Islam — and it is very evil and undemocratic.

We need more TV appearances like this one. Let honest Muslims explain what Islam really is, and spare us the politically sanitized version by leftist apologists and other useful idiots about what they want Islam to be.

Also pay particular attention to the very subtle threat at the end of the clip where Qureishi admonishes Lysbakken to select his words more carefully when he refers to Islam.

And, by the way, Qureishi wasn’t assaulted by any left-wing brownshirt thugs when he left the building, which would surely have been the case if members of SIAN or the NDL had appeared on the show and presented similar material about this sinister political ideology. I wonder if Qureishi is guilty of ‘Islamophobia’ in the eyes of the leftists?

Many thanks to Vlad Tepes for the subtitling:

Transcript:

During the second half of the 20th century, many terms coined by psychologists were picked up by the general public and developed currency in popular discourse. One of the most frequently used is the word “projection”. It is now commonly understood to mean “unconsciously ascribing to others negative characteristics which you yourself possess”.

Never has the power of projection been more evident than in the political culture of Sweden. From an outsider’s perspective, Sweden displays all the attributes of a fascist state: only one political point of view is considered acceptable, and any dissent against it is vigorously punished, by both official and unofficial means. Those who oppose the reigning ideology may lose their jobs or be prosecuted. They are vilified and scapegoated in the (largely state-owned) media to the point where compliant Swedish drones are made to understand that all dissidents are fair game, and deserve anything bad that happens to them.

Now, that sounds like fascism to me. But the Swedish media reserve the term for Sverigedemokraterna (the Sweden Democrats, SD), the only significant political party that opposes mass immigration and challenges the reigning Multicultural ideology. For such blatant heresies they are denounced in the press, beaten up by gangs of “anti-fascists” in the street, and have their homes and cars vandalized. Known supporters of SD may lose their jobs or pensions.

Yet all of this is acceptable, you see, and even commendable, because the Sweden Democrats are fascists. As you will learn from the article below, this “fact” has been proven by scientific research, so we know it must be true.

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

Before presenting the translated article, some background is necessary. A scandal surrounding Sverigedemokraterna arose last fall, when an incident that occurred more than two years previously came to light through the release of a video to the press.

In the summer of 2010, Kent Ekeroth and Erik Almqvist — both later elected to the Swedish parliament for Sverigedemokraterna — became involved in an early morning brawl in the city of Stockholm. In a movie clip filmed with a mobile phone, Erik Almqvist was heard to shout abuse at a 21-year-old woman, and used the derogative word babbe about the immigrant comedian Soran Ismail.

Later in the video, the two politicians were seen picking up iron rods for their defense, an incident that caused a major Twitter campaign and media uproar in Sweden. After this incident Islam-critical blogs became known as “iron rod blogs” in Sweden.

As a consequence of the affair, Erik Almqvist resigned his seat in the Swedish parliament, while Kent Ekeroth resigned from his positions in the parliament, but retained his seat.

This incident, which was immediately seized on by the media powers-that-be as a welcome “gotcha” moment concerning SD, is what is referred to in the article below (which was published last November) as “yesterday’s events”.

Many thanks to our Swedish correspondent Skånska for translating this piece from Dagens Nyheter. Skånska’s commentary and explanations have been placed in square brackets:

“The Sweden Democrats are a fascist party”
by Henrik Arnstad

15 November 2012

Problematic terminology. A new fascism celebrates triumphs in Europe. This applies not least to the Sweden Democrats, who advance in a country where fascism has up until now been weak. Today’s confusion of concepts must end and it is time to name SD properly in the public discourse, writes historian and journalist Henrik Arnstad.

The Sweden Democrats (SD) are gaining even more sympathizers, and thus it is time for Sweden to leave the widespread ignorance of fascism behind. Sweden — as well as all of Europe — needs to confront the presence of an ideology that has the potential to dominate the 21st century.

The core of the fascist ideology is nationalism. A popular ultra-nationalism, with the aim of saving the nation from decay and degeneration with national rebirth as a real political objective.

First, however, the cancer tumor on the nation’s body must be fought. For Hitler, it was about the Jews and the solution was the Holocaust. [Typical Swedish academic nonsense: the definition of die Judenfrage and die Endlösung were not synchronous; they were more than six years apart, partly during wartime. Auswanderung came first, even to Madagascar!]

For SD, it is about Islam, which has to be cleared away – if nothing else, by means of genocide.

If we are to understand SD, it is of the utmost importance that we realize the optimism in this. Today fascism is Sweden’s only political movement that is confident of the future. For the voters, SD paint in beautiful colors an ethnically cleansed, mythical and revitalized nationalist Sweden. Compare, for example, the Social Democrats’ pessimistic nostalgia. Therefore fascism is advancing in the polls.

Today we live in a Europe where a new fascist politics celebrates triumphs. This applies not least to SD, advancing in a country where previously fascism was weak. This new politics is called by international research “neo-fascism”, and is the result of an intellectual work which began in France in the years after 1968.

Under the intellectual leadership of the philosopher Alain de Benoist the movement Nouvelle Droite (the New Right) formulated the future of fascism — it was about building a new political brand after Adolf Hitler, after World War II and Auschwitz-Birkenau. The fight for one’s own “biological race” was condemned, not least because science left racial biology behind.

Instead the new fascism was formulated:

• The pluralistic and multicultural society shall be abolished in favor of an ethnically homogeneous society.
• Western democracy — based on universal human rights and individual freedom — shall be replaced by a democracy based on the idea of an “organic society”.
• The cosmopolitanism of the modern era shall be defeated through a celebration of authentic national culture.
• Insight must be reached that European cultures find themselves facing an acute threat; they have almost gone off the rails. Multiculturalism and multi-ethnicity undermine homogeneous cultural and ethnic identities in Europe.
• The new fascism shall be presented as an innovative third way between the traditional left and right.

Strategically, the very word “fascism” should be fought — it should not be used due to its nature as a term of invective. When France as the new fascist pioneer country put into practical politic service — through the party National Front — the political thoughts of Nouvelle Droite, new standards were created, which today apply to neo-fascism. All references to interwar fascism are clinically removed, as well as all open violence. The riding boots have been replaced by polished shoes, the leash by a necktie.

Even the Swedish SD eventually learned the lesson (even if yesterday’s events show that the traditional biological racism remain underneath the cleaned surface).

However, ideologically speaking, fascism is still fascism. Racism is manifested — then as now — deriving from ultra-nationalism, in an ongoing negotiation about who is included or excluded. In the 1930s, the Jews were diverse and in a whimsical fashion alternately included and excluded in the concept of “the nation” (prime example is Mussolini’s Italy).

In the past, SD members were hatefully anti-Semitic and the party leader spoke of “Jewish pigs”. Today, SD includes Swedish Jews in “the nation” — which may change tomorrow.

The neo-fascists of SD do not want to abolish parliamentary democracy, unlike, for example, Adolf Hitler. Instead, the tyranny of the majority society shall prevail, and, via democratic decision, vulnerable minorities shall be racially oppressed. Neo-fascism does not threatens the parliamentary system, but the basic idea of every human’s equal value in a liberal democracy.

How then might the traditional parties take action to handle SD and neo-fascism? I think we can actually learn from history.

1.		Never cooperate. Swedish politicians have done the right thing, never having collaborated with SD. The moment when in particular the traditional Right is tempted to form alliances to meet the Left, fascism will win score really big successes. That was how both Hitler and Mussolini gained power.
2.		Never any political leakage. Every now and then you hear voices about “daring to debate,” [våga ta debatten] which means buying into SD’s formulation problem. This is a path dangerous to life. That Germany accepted Hitler’s idea of “the Jewish question” meant no setback for his party, on the contrary. That the “Jews” were discussed as a social problem rather than what they really were — a community resource — set a course towards disaster.
3.		Dare to use the correct terminology. Consensus is total in the community of international experts on research into fascism: the new European parties are fascist. Today’s conceptual confusion must end; it’s time to begin naming SD properly in public discourse.

The last point is the most difficult one. It seems painful, distressing and traumatic for the West to accept the return of fascism.

Nevertheless, it is important. The entire Swedish political spectrum need to rethink the issue. Both the bourgeois bloc [MFCK-borgerlig] and the Red-Green [SMV vänster] bloc have a new main enemy — whose goal is not to defeat the Right or the Left. SD’s party secretary Björn Söder today talks about reaching more than fifty percent of the voters.

Fascism does not share political power; fascism wants the power all to itself. Fascism has always been underestimated, but fascism should never be underestimated. We have moved into a new fascist era, but have historical experience that we may take advantage of in this new era. If we — this the second time — dare to look the black and brown ideology straight in the face.

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

Henrik Arnstad is a historian and a journalist.

For five years the author has been studying the ideology of fascism based on modern international research. In the spring his book will be published: “Beloved fascism: The ideology and history of the black and brown movements.”

Members of the British Parliament are asking for a 32% pay raise for themselves. They believe they deserve it, and also want to receive a final-salary pension when they leave office.

In other news, a member of a gypsy theft gang in Sicily was electrocuted when he and his accomplices attempted to steal a length of copper power cable.

To see the headlines and the articles, open the full news post.

Thanks to C. Cantoni, Fjordman, Insubria, JD, Jerry Gordon, Kitman, 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.

Commenters are advised to leave their comments at this post (rather than with the news articles) so that they are more easily accessible.

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.

Our Spanish correspondent Hermes takes a hard look at the present phantasmagorical reality of Modern Multicultural Europe, and the imminent dystopian future that inevitably awaits it.

Strange Days
by Hermes

These are strange days indeed.

What we are witnessing in these days is the fading away of entire societies, the gradual disappearance of a way of life and a set of values which may well have been their own hangmen. Democracy somehow does not seem to work as it should, or as one thinks it should. Democracy is backfiring on the West itself.

Some weeks ago in the district of Molenbeek in Belgium, an Islamist political party called “Islam Party” succeeded in installing Redouane Ahrouch, the very founder of the Islam Party, and Lhoucine Ait Jeddig into the City Councils of Anderlecht and Molenbeek-St. Jean respectively, thanks to votes from those towns’ significant Muslim populations. Redouane Ahrouch himself stated that: “We are elected Islamists, but above all, we are really and truly Muslims,” and that “we will become an Islamic state.” This was said openly in front of TV cameras by a newly-elected member to a Belgian City Council. Sometime later, and while the pledge ceremony was taking place, an outraged citizen stood up and figuratively slapped the Town Council’s face with the (otherwise openly declared) truth about those two new Muslim council members.

So what is all the fuss about? A majority of citizens voted for a party which wants to introduce an absolute dictatorial ruling system which is the exact opposite of democracy. That is, the introduction of a totalitarian ruling system is being carried out through democratic means. Democracy itself is allowing dictatorship to emerge. That is, a given political system is allowing itself to be overthrown by a new one, which in theory should be prevented from emerging by the previous one.

By the way — the reaction of this outraged citizen was something to be highly praised, and also an example to be followed by everybody… but the problem is that this courageous and fully justified reaction to the dreadful events that were taking place in the city council was, tragically enough, a reaction against the outcome of a democratic process. So in the eyes of democracy, his reaction was, again tragically enough, barely justified.

Remember this? ““Thanks to your democratic laws, we will overtake you; thanks to your religious laws, we will rule over you.” This statement was uttered by the Imam of Izmir, the citation itself coming from Gernot Facius in the newspaper Die Welt on 06.10.2001.

They could not express themselves more openly. This is as if the Achaeans had been telling the citizens of Troy that they would build a wooden horse, hide inside it, and once the horse had been towed inside the walls, they would spring out and take over the city — and the inhabitants of Troy were providing the Achaeans with wooden planks, nails and ropes in order to build the horse.

It is exactly the same. The west is enabling Muslims to form political parties, with the help of which sharia — the exact opposite of pluralism and democracy — is slowly being introduced into the democratic system itself, thus undermining it. Democracy is allowing itself to be abolished.

And this is happening all over Europe. Muslims are slowly becoming members of political parties and of local, national and the European parliament while also participating in Islamic associations. And parallel to this, the Muslim population steadily increases, thanks to immigration and the high birth rate within this community. That is, a voter base is being slowly created in order to overthrow democracy in a democratic way.

According to the ancient Greek philosopher, Plato, the very success of democracy spells the death of democracy itself. Factions fighting for power would arise within the democratic government. And because these factions only see democracy as a tool to be used to ascend into power, their squabbling and abuse of democratic principles create chaos and disorder in the system.

Should restrictions on democracy be imposed? Nowadays this is scarcely imaginable, since in this case we would no longer be talking about democracy, and there seems to be a general obsession with democracy as the first and foremost system of government, without which no life would be possible on earth.

“Democracy” is the mantra of these strange days we are now living in. Democracy is being exported to the Middle East, and the result of this has come surprisingly quickly, as the democratically elected Mohammed Morsi decided to grant himself sweeping powers.

Many say that democracy is flawed, a political system with many drawbacks and pitfalls. But perhaps one could say that democracy itself is flawless. The problem lies not in the system itself, but with the people who take part in. It is like when one says that alcohol causes traffic accidents. It is not alcohol causing them, but people drinking too much. And it is not free access to weapons that causes school shootings, but the irresponsible behavior of people who use them. It’s humans, and not the system itself, who are flawed — namely by greed, hatred and delusion. And by this I mean not only politicians, but the easily influenced masses.

Given this regrettable situation in Europe, perhaps one has no option but to observe silently the unfolding scenario. Muslims are becoming not only a mere demographic, but also an elective majority, and all the more so since native Europeans are leaving the continent in great numbers, in this way passively augmenting the number of Muslims who will vote for their own Muslim representatives, as has already happened in Molenbeek in Belgium. This was long ago forecasted, but because the Western man, contrary to Muslims, seems to generally to lack the capacity for long-term thinking, or simply an ability to take long-term warnings seriously, this was bound to happen.

The demographic boom of the Muslim population is occurring in parallel with an overwhelming diaspora of native Europeans, and this may trigger a gloomy scenario: soon there will not be a large enough native European workforce to be squeezed in order to continue giving welfare benefits to the exponentially increasing number of immigrants plus their children.

European professionals are giving up their current life and leaving Europe in ever-growing numbers. They are leaving a continent which is steadily sinking into poverty and turning into an asylum center for the entire world. The Dutch are leaving The Netherlands out of fear of the overwhelming flood of Muslim immigrants who have no intention of integrating, but plan to turn the entire country into an uninhabitable sharia swamp. The native British are also fleeing their homeland, deserting the UK while new floods of immigrants are expected to arrive to the shores of England, and the most recent data show that this trend is accelerating.

Germany is also losing its most talented citizens, who are looking for a better life abroad, while the country is increasingly suffering from a nationwide plague of immigrant-related crime, all in the face of the most blatant indifference and passivity of the authorities, who are even (still) trying to depict the unfolding cataclysm as something positive and enriching.

France also has its share of all this mess, of course, where the little-known, but — in spite of all the efforts made by the MSM and French politicians to conceal and/or ridicule it — certainly present phenomenon of anti-white racism is slowly but surely becoming an everyday reality for the native French. Many of the natives are looking for better opportunities in French-speaking territories such as Quebec. In this case, as in others mentioned above, and more to follow, it is about young and educated people with an enterprising spirit who migrate. They see no chances to succeed in today’s Europe, a ramshackle continent struggling to keep its political and financial structures in one piece, which are irremediably bound to collapse.

Spain, which is the European country with the highest unemployment rate in the EU, is also losing thousands of talented people who seek a better future in, most interestingly, such countries as Ecuador, a country from which some years ago nationals flooded to Spain in order to take their share of the booming construction industry, or Brazil, where authorities had to set up restrictions on Spaniards landing in the country of samba and cairipinha, including holding a return ticket with a fixed departure date or enough financial resources to live in the country. Has any European country ever taken such measures regarding immigration?

Portugal has recently experienced a brutal increase in the number of nationals emigrating from the country. 80% of Portuguese nationals emigrating outside of Europe land in Angola, but another preferred destination is of course Brazil, a country which both experienced professionals and newly-graduated engineers see as a new land of opportunity in order to make advance professionally or start a career.

One may be tempted to draw parallels between this and other European diasporas such as that of Swedish emigration to America during the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century, or that which took place from Ireland after the potato famine broke out in 1845. But in those cases it was just immigration, and not population replacement, as now happens in the West. Young, educated and entrepreneurial Europeans are leaving the continent en masse, and this gap is being filled with millions of uneducated, uncivilized, and mostly aggressive people coming from cultures in which social standards are quite different from those of Europe. A population replacement is occurring with the excuse that the Western population is aging and shrinking. But what are the reasons for this aging and shrinking? By now everybody must have a clue about this. These immigrants come from countries in which honor killing, stoning, child-abuse and other barbarities are already present, or are slowly becoming the norm. And it is precisely this kind of people which are most likely to shape the future of the European continent.

History has seldom witnessed such a degree of blindness and ignorance on the part of the ruling elites (even taking into consideration that all what they do is willful), who continue with their infamous machinations even in spite of the consequences of their policies knocking at their doors, and this cannot therefore be described as a simple miscalculation or the wrong policies having been chosen. If one sees that certain policies have effects which were initially not desired, then one tends to abolish them, or put into effect new policies which counteract those erroneous ones taken earlier. Or, as this essay states: “When an experiment or a medical trial is injurious and damaging to its subjects and patients, one usually stops it. If the experiment continues, those responsible will likely face investigation and later prosecution.” There may be a certain degree of miscalculation indeed, but this may be due to the insane and irrational nature of the very roots from which these kind of policies originate. Because the creators of these directives are adamantly convinced that they are right, they are also adamantly convinced that things must turn out as they have planned, and anybody contradicting them and/or pointing to the blatant mistakes and to the even more blatant outcomes of their paranoid acts is to be promptly squashed with the never-fading “Nazi-fascist” mantra.

An ideology based on utopian visions of the world and societies, an ideology created and promoted by those whose thirst for power and control over people mixes with surreal ideas about how societies which have been perfectly functional for centuries must ideally look like (as if they were affirming that until now, and for centuries, societies have been functioning on the basis of erroneous paradigms!), and of how members of that society must be, according to the parameters of their utopian theories.

These days we are living in are strange days indeed. Citing Takuan Seiyo: “These are historic, incredible times. Walk through them with wide open eyes, for nothing like this has happened since the fall of Rome.”

These times are incredible indeed. They will provide historians of the future with sufficient material to study and debate for several human lifespans.

Three Kurdish women, all of them activists in the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), were shot to death today in Paris at a Kurdish information center. The French interior minister described the killings as “assassinations”, and says the women were “without doubt executed”. It is not clear whether the assassins were Turks or from a rival Kurdish faction.

In other news, former president Bill Clinton was named Father of the Year by the National Father’s Day Council. Meanwhile, Wile E. Coyote has been made an honorary roadrunner by the National Roadrunner’s Association. OK, I admit it — I made that last one up.

To see the headlines and the articles, open the full news post.

Thanks to C. Cantoni, Erick Stakelbeck, Fjordman, Insubria, JD, Jerry Gordon, Kitman, 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.

Commenters are advised to leave their comments at this post (rather than with the news articles) so that they are more easily accessible.

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.

Posting has been light today, for two reasons. The first one is that I’ve been doing real work (i.e. a programming job that pays actual money), and it’s been occupying most of my time. This is good news for Schloss Bodissey, but bad news for the readers of this blog.

The other reason is that late last night Dymphna decided that the floor needed to be taught a lesson, so she smacked it a good one with her knees, elbows, and wrists.

Here’s the story: while she was sitting there, her foot and leg had gone to sleep without her realizing it. When she stood up, “it felt like ginger ale”, as she said later. The leg went out from under her, and then she had a close encounter with the linoleum.

Her little notebook computer was in her hands at the time, but it actually sustained less damage than she did. She is recovering nicely now, but is still experiencing pain at several major structural intersections. I had to drive into town this afternoon to buy her a wrist brace.

Not to worry — she’ll be back to normal soon enough. However, given that she has fibromyalgia and PTSD, a trauma of this magnitude leaves a somatic aftershock that continues for awhile. What she needs now is plenty of sleep. Her body seems to know that — I’ve been keeping an eye on her, trying to prevent her from sleeping through the entire afternoon and evening, because I’m afraid she’ll be awake all night if she does.

We’ll see what tomorrow brings.

The news feed is unusually fat tonight — more than a hundred items. Two major stories have contributed to the flood: the talk of new gun restrictions by the Obama administration using executive orders, and the (seemingly serious) proposal by the Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman that the U. S. Treasury mint a trillion-dollar platinum coin and use it to pay off the Fed and bring down the national debt. Presumably the new coin would not actually have a face value corresponding to the amount of platinum in it, otherwise it would have to be more massive than a manhole cover.

In other news, a young man and a young woman (not married) in Tunisia have been sentenced to jail time for kissing in public. This is the latest example of enlightened jurisprudence practiced by the new sharia-compliant democratic government that was installed in Tunisia as the result of the “Arab Spring”.

To see the headlines and the articles, open the full news post.

Thanks to C. Cantoni, Erick Stakelbeck, Fjordman, Insubria, JD, Jerry Gordon, JP, Kitman, 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.

Commenters are advised to leave their comments at this post (rather than with the news articles) so that they are more easily accessible.

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.

Gavin Boby of Law and Freedom has scored another victory. He sent out an email earlier today describing his recent success against the Brent mosque, and looking ahead to the coming challenges in Leeds and other locations in the UK.

How We Win
by Gavin Boby

We’ve won 16 out of 17 mosque cases that we’ve fought — a 94.11% success rate.

That could be beginner’s luck, right? Maybe we just keep stumbling on four-leafed clovers.

So I thought I’d drill down into one of our recent wins where the evidence is online.

Please see the Brent case, here, our last win but one. Our brief write up is here.

We hit the ground with this application on 20th October 2012. Please see the Council’s comments page, here: 298 comments in total, and all but 10 of them were objections. Pretty strongly worded, too.

You’ll see that this application was registered on 14th September, and had only got 2 comments by 20th October, when we got involved. But the reaction was immediate. See the objections from 20th October onwards. This is how we won.

When the refusal notice came through, the refusal reasons (see here) were very similar to the objections we suggested local people might like to use in their letters (see here).

The reason I’m going on about this is to show that:

• You have to get ordinary local people to register their objections with the Council;
• Ordinary people don’t want a mosque near them, and are keen to register their objections if they know (a) how and where, (b) that it isn’t a stitch-up, and (c) the they can win;
• If you help people in this way, Councils have to take notice, and you will win.
• Other than that, let Councils know that they’re on the hook for their decisions. Be relentless. Push.

Things got worse for mosques in 2012. And in 2013 they’re going to get worser.

Previous posts about Gavin Boby and the Law and Freedom Foundation:

This is one of the more bizarre stories to come across my desk recently.

I haven’t filed it under “cultural enrichment”, despite the fact that the accomplished artist — who plans to beat animals to death at an opening in the Pompidou Center — is of Algerian origin. I suspect that his project would never have seen the light of day if he had not been “brown”, but there’s no way to know for sure.

Does his treatment of his artistic subjects follow halal guidelines? Does this have anything at all to do with Islam? You decide.

Many thanks to our Spanish correspondent Hermes for translating the article from Alerta Digital:

Degradation of France has no limits: a “French” “artist” intended to kill animals in the Centre Pompidou

The animal right activists are demanding that a bloody show in the famous French Centre Pompidou be banned. The French artist Adel Abdessemed plans to end his exhibition in this museum by torturing animals.

The artist of Algerian origin will bring a cow, a calf, a pig, a goat and a sheep to the Centre Pompidou — which is one of the most famous museums in Paris — and smash them to death with a hammer to the sound of heavy [metal music].

“We have to stop this absurd show from the point of view of the true artists and those who appreciate art. Torturing animals is not art, but cruelty, and humans should not do this. This show would be an insult to the feelings of many people who defend animals,” says the petition addressed to Culture Minister Aurélie Filippetti.

The appeal to stop this “dreadful crime” has received 25,500 signatures in three weeks at the civil organization’s website avaaz.org, but 30,000 are needed. The animal rights activists will demonstrate next to the museum.

This center is currently presenting the first major exhibition dedicated to the artist Adel Abdessemed, which will be open till January 7, and bears the name “I am Innocent”. A gigantic sculpture was temporarily erected as part of the exhibition. It displays the famous head butt which the French Zinedine Zidane directed to the Italian Marco Matterazi at the final of the 2006 World Soccer Championship in Germany.

In spite of the important prestige and international recognition, many have doubts about the artistic value of Adel Abdessemed. Some years ago one of his exhibitions was closed in San Francisco five days after the opening, due to massive protests and threats.

France has recently seen scandals involving animals. This week the famous actress Brigitte Bardot declared that she will apply for the Russian citizenship if two elephants in the Lyon zoo that are ill with tuberculosis are killed because of fears that the illness could be passed on to humans.

Sabatina James is the daughter of Pakistani parents who immigrated to Germany. She estranged her parents by becoming an apostate from Islam and a convert to Christianity. Nowadays she is an activist who speaks out on behalf of former Muslims, and calls attention to the plight of Christians in Pakistan.

The International Civil Liberties Alliance website includes introduction to the interview with Sabatina:

Non-Muslims are often persecuted in many member states of the Organsiation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC). However, the OIC spends much of its time lecturing Western countries about religious tolerance. They have been lobbying for a global blasphemy law so that Western countries are effectively brought into line with the ‘human rights’ philosophy of countries like Pakistan.

UNHRC Resolution 16/18, which the OIC has been pushing, talks about tackling discrimination based on religion or belief. If this is something that they genuinely want to address then they should do it within their own countries rather than at the United Nations. The OIC clearly does not know what religious tolerance means!

By accommodating the demands of the OIC Western governments are dragging our human rights standards down to the level of countries like Pakistan. It is therefore likely that the result of such accommodation will be that non-Muslims are treated as shamefully in Western countries as they are in places like Pakistan. This is completely unacceptable. By accommodating the demands of the OIC, Western governments are endorsing the way non-Muslims are treated in OIC member states. In the following video, Sabatina James outlines the plight of Christians in Pakistan.

Sabatina James, an ex-Muslim of Pakistani origin, explains the dire situation for those in Pakistan and elsewhere who do not accept Islam as their religion, but are finding that Christianity is a more humanitarian religion and are putting their faith in Jesus. A human rights disaster usually ignored by our governments.

Many thanks to Elisabeth Sabaditsch-Wolff and Europe News for preparing and translating this Christmas interview with Sabatina James for the EN Vimeo channel:

A full transcript is available at the ICLA website.

In the non-aftermath of the brutal hit-and-run slaughter in Benghazi, the one Obama callously termed “a bump in the road”, I have waited to see this atrocity addressed with any serious investigation by the media. How naïve can one be? Our bought-and-paid-for MSM know well the price for access to Obama and his administration: complicit silence when he demands it. For Benghazi, the complicity was overt; thus The Echo Chamber is empty of all substantial sound on this “old” “stale” subject.

The music video below is from last November, before the burial was quite complete. That was before The MSM had finished labeling the subject of Benghazi as “old” news, before they’d assumed their studied indifference to the fact that high-level officials watched our men die in real time. Watched them die and refused to permit anyone to come to their aid.

And our journalists also followed orders to stand down. Obama got up the next morning and continued campaigning for his second term.

Why do these yes-men and women complain that the public’s level of trust in them is somewhat lower than the low regard in which politicians are held? The lack of trust in both has been well-earned.

Note that this music vid goes back to the beginning, when the stonewalling was little more than tissue-thin. The spurious claims about “an anti-Muslim video” causing the deaths in Benghazi were never credible; that gauze wall could have been pulled apart by any one MSM “personality” with enough integrity to investigate and call out this administration on its perfidy.

Here’s something to ponder: why did no one interview the film producer when he was in jail awaiting trial? Was he forbidden access to the press? Why the extreme lack of interest on the part of the MSM in this shadowy figure? Just another facet of their paid-for silence? If access was refused why wasn’t that an item of interest for journalists usually willing to track down the least little scintilla of ‘evidence’ when Sarah Palin was in their cross-hairs?

Another thing from that time: why did Mitt Romney deliberately join in the ringing silence — the hear-no, see-no, tell-no mime show surrounding this event? He utterly failed to raise essential questions about the lame lies concerning the “video” or the cover-up of that brutal Islam-style death of an American government official in Libya. Christopher Stevens appears to have ended spent his last moments on earth much as Gadhafi did. If there is one thing we thought we knew about Romney, it was that he was a decent, courageous man. Yet this decent man let Stevens’ death go right by him as he maintained his place in the chorus of silence.

We may be much further down the road to a totalitarian culture than we’d like to think.

I came across the video on Twitter this morning. I can’t find the tweet now — Twitter is a fast-moving stream — to give proper credit, but the message said that Instapundit had predicted back then (late November) that this would be the tune of 2012.

When I looked today, almost six weeks later, it had somewhat over 9,000 views. NINE THOUSAND! In other words, the response to this attempt to publicize the atrocity failed. It’s as though we’ve had a pail of amnesia fluid poured over us followed by an endless barrage ( I use the word advisedly) of trivial and tragic distractions to take us away from the horror of Benghazi.

Looking at the video brought it all back, including the unanswered questions I pose to you today. Few people believe our current Secretary of State will tell the truth while she is testifying before Congress. We have become so jaded, so inured to corruption that we no longer even bother to complain about this serious breach of the law. It is merely business-as-usual inside the Beltway.

The singer has it right:

“….on 9/11 we should have known…”

The FIRST 9/11 should have been our wake-up call. But then those buckets of amnesia, flung over us by government, press, and our “experts” make it increasingly harder to stay awake.

Belfast experienced violent unrest for the fifth day in a row as loyalist protesters clashed with police. The cause of the demonstrators’ anger was an official decision to stop flying the Union Jack every day over public buildings.

In other news, the number of unemployed in the Eurozone rose by 113,000 in November, pushing the jobless rate to a record 11.8%. Meanwhile, the European Commission warns that the gap between the richer countries and poorer countries is widening.

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