There is an extremely important article here on Breivik’s funding, by Justin Raimondo.
It also makes plain that not only did Pamela Geller post a string of virulent anti Norwegian-Muslim articles on her website, not only did she travel to Norway to address a hate rally, not only did Brehvik post to her website and quote it as an influence. She actively supported and encouraged those planning to use terrorism.
This is an excerpt from an email she says she received and posted on her blog:
“I am running an email I received from an Atlas reader in Norway. It is devastating in its matter-of-factness.
“Well, yes, the situation is worsening. Stepping up from 29 000 immigrants every year, in 2007 we will be getting a total of 35 000 immigrants from somalia, iran, iraq and afghanistan. The nations capital is already 50% muslim, and they ALL go there after entering Norway. Adding the 1.2 births per woman per year from muslim women, there will be 300 000+ muslims out of the then 480 000 inhabitants of that city.
“Orders from Libya and Iran say that Oslo will be known as Medina at the latest in 2010, although I consider this a PR-stunt nevertheless it is their plan.
“From Israel the hordes clawing at the walls of Jerusalem proclaim cheerfully that next year there will be no more Israel, and I know Israel shrugs this off as do I, and will mount a strike during the summer against all of its enemies in the middle east. This will make the muslims worldwide go into a frenzy, attacking everyone around them.
“We are stockpiling and caching weapons, ammunition and equipment. This is going to happen fast.
As Raimondo says, Geller goes on to say that she is protecting the proto-terrorist’s identity so he won’t be arrested. We do not know how this wannabe terrorist in Norway relates to Breivik or his other “cells”. Geller may know but the police are not asking her.
There can be no doubt at all that, were Geller a Muslim, this amount of evidence and connection would have her in jail by now. Do not hold your breath.
Clark,
the honest answer is I don’t know. Certainly Swiss cities are amongst the safest in the world and the Swiss are not overly concerned about crime in general. Googling ‘racially motivated crime in Switzerland’ did not turn up anything obvious. I think racism in Switzerland takes ‘milder’ forms such as social exclusion. An ex-colleague of mine in Zurich, a very well educated French citizen of African origin, a highly qualified electronics engineer fluent in Russian, French and English, was unable to find an apartment to rent and was compelled to live in one that was provided by the employer above the office (common in Zurich). According to him, landlords were not able to accept a black tenant, either because of their own prejudice or because of the prejudice of their other tenants. It is a very sad story and I hope this was transient and Swiss attitudes will have changed. This was in 2001.
I found some general crime stats for Switzerland:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_Switzerland
This Wayne fellow seems a bit mental. A bit like a very incautious Alfred with a blunderbus.
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However, Clark is certainly wrong about the cartoon controversy. Not only were there death threats but actual attempts on the lives of the cartoonists and attacks on Danish embassies. Indeed much of it had been stirred up by those who were determined to find offence.
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It is simply delusional to try and blur all the lines and pretend everything is the same as everything else despite how happy a world we may have if it were true.
Evgueni, thanks. When I’ve argued for a more proportional electoral system in the UK, a common objection is that some Far Right candidates would be elected. I argued that I expected representation to tend to decrease actual racist behaviour.
Angrysoba, I was referring to the demonstration that Wayne referred to. Yes, there were worse incidents elsewhere. The Salman Rushdie matter was considerably worse still. And yes, such incidents are deliberately inflamed by a very small number of people. There were also probably political motivations behind the Salman Rushdie affair. The fatwa came from Iran, and we know how Iran had been destabilised by the US.
When I’ve argued for a more proportional electoral system in the UK, a common objection is that some Far Right candidates would be elected. I argued that I expected representation to tend to decrease actual racist behaviour.
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Probably unlikely. The Weimar Republic was, of course, famously very proportional in its voting system and that let in a lot of fascist parties. This is often held up as an example of the anti-PR campaign. I don’t know what the national vote for the BNP is (perhaps Alfred could tell us) but I am sure you could foresee them winning a seat or two. They won MEP seats after all.
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And of course, everyone’s favourite state to hate, Israel, has PR and it does allow some extremist political and clerical parties to win a handful of seats.
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A better argument, rather than simply hoping things will work out, is that such parties ARE fringe and that their existence in parliament is a nuisance that liberal democracies will simply have to put up with.
The fatwa came from Iran, and we know how Iran had been destabilised by the US.
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Clark, this is simply a non-sequitur.
Angrysoba, I was sent a copy of that inflammatory e-mail. It used those placards as a justification for the war on Iraq!
Angrysoba, you wrote: “Clark, this is simply a non-sequitur.”
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OK, I should have explained. Democracy in Iran was removed by US operation Ajax that reinstalled the Shah, much to the resentment of Iranians. This in turn led to the Iranian revolution. Without that background, there would have been no Ayatollah in power to issue such a powerful fatwa.
Angrysoba, you’d have to compare racist attacks and violent demonstrations in the Weimar Republic with countries that didn’t permit representation of the Far Right. Far Right politics was prevalent in many countries at the time.
Angrysoba, you’d have to compare racist attacks and violent demonstrations in the Weimar Republic with countries that didn’t permit representation of the Far Right. Far Right politics was prevalent in many countries at the time.
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Are you saying you favour PR in countries where the Far Right is banned?
Angrysoba, I was sent a copy of that inflammatory e-mail. It used those placards as a justification for the war on Iraq!
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Sorry, I am not sure which email you are talking about that used “those placards as a justification for the war on Iraq.”
Gary Yonge’s article that you reproduced in full is pretty unconvincing Suhayl.
1.On muslim demographics in Europe he refers to 4 predictions in the article. He takes (without explaining why) the lowest estimate from Pew as gospel (they are a market research organisation BTW, not professional demographers), and thinks that gives him the authority to rubbish the other estimates- ‘This is nonsense. The projections are way off’ he writes of the other studies. Anyone who has done Logic 101 can see the holes in this mode of argument.
2.He castigates Thilo Sarrazin for daring to point out that first cousin marriage results in a higher predisposition to genetic defects- which is of course true. What Sarrazin states about the Kurds in Germany in respect of high rates of genetic malformations is just as true of Pakistani immigrants in this country. In both cases, the costs resulting from widespread first cousin marriage in immigrant communities are met by taxpayers via the health services & the benefits system. This is a cause of justified resentment on the part of German & UK tax payers who don’t import first cousins from faraway countries for the purpose of marriage.
3. He gives the game away when he writes this- ‘But even if these predictions were true, so what? There’s nothing to say Europe has to remain Christian or majority-white.’
Will however Europe be recognisably ‘European’ in those circumstances ? Would, Suhayl, your country of origin still be recognisable if it were to become, in the space of a few generations, overwhelming white (or black) & Christian ? I doubt it- and that is the point Younge seeks to obscure.
Are you saying you favour PR in countries where the Far Right is banned?
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No, I’m theorising that representation diffuses tension, and hence diffuses actual racist violence and demonstrations. I don’t advocate banning political parties.
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The inflammatory e-mail can be seen via my snopes.com link above. The war comment is after all the photo’s.
OK, I should have explained. Democracy in Iran was removed by US operation Ajax that reinstalled the Shah, much to the resentment of Iranians. This in turn led to the Iranian revolution. Without that background, there would have been no Ayatollah in power to issue such a powerful fatwa.
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Sorry, but this is a complete simplification. Where do you get the idea that the Ayatollah put a fatwa on Salman Rushdie at the end of the Eighties because of a US/UK coup against Mossadeq in 1953??? Also, the Shah wasn’t “reinstalled”. He was the Shah before and during the coup as well. As much as I would have liked Iran to follow the path that Mossadeq himself wanted to go down it is naiive in the extreme to think that everything that happened from the point of the coup was set-in-motion by the coup.
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Plenty of the revolutionaries themselves were put to death by Khomeini’s goons – the Tudeh party was wiped out – and many others in the Islamic party actually were against the fatwa such as people like Montazeri who was Khomeini’s next in line until he condemned Khomeini’s increasing brutality and extremism. There’s no need to get the flagellation rods out.
No, I’m theorising that representation diffuses tension, and hence diffuses actual racist violence and demonstrations. I don’t advocate banning political parties.
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The inflammatory e-mail can be seen via my snopes.com link above. The war comment is after all the photo’s.
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I can’t necessarily agree with your first point. I think some people, particularly far right parties, are going to attract violent people and I don’t advocate changing a political system to placate those who would otherwise commit acts of violence. In fact, as we know, having “more representative” government doesn’t guarantee diffusing racial or political violence; Norway has proportional representation.
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I’ve looked at the Snopes link you provided. Remember that this is dated 2006 so it can’t really be deemed a justification for the war in Iraq. In fact, nowhere does it even say anything about Iraq.
Just for the record, some background on the 1953 Iranian Coup D’etat – It came about because the Iranian’s nationalized what were BP’s oil interests (through Anglo-Iranian Oil Company) in Iran in 1951 and MI6 was determined on a coup d’etat. For the coup to suceed, the FCO to persuade the American’s to participate. At first the American’s were reluctant to be involved, but eventually they were conned into it. As Wikipedia quotes: “The American CIA with the help of bribes to politicians, soldiers, mobs, and newspapers, and contacts/information from the British embassy and secret service, organized a coup. The shah issued an edict removing Mosaddeq from power and General Fazlollah Zahedi, led tanks to Mosaddeq’s residence overthrowing him from office”. The end result – years of brutal totalitarian rule by the Shah; followed by years of brutal totalitarian rule by the ayatollahs.
Sorry, now that I understand a point you made earlier, Clark, I will quickly return to it:
you’d have to compare racist attacks and violent demonstrations in the Weimar Republic with countries that didn’t permit representation of the Far Right.
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Okay, in the Weimar Republic it was a massive problem with all kinds of murders and politically motivated punchups in the streets going on. While in the Soviet Union such things had become rare.
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I’m theorising that representation diffuses tension, and hence diffuses actual racist violence and demonstrations. I don’t advocate banning political parties.
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In fact, I think the reverse could also be true. North Korea has very little racist violence and demonstrations. Other authoritarian countries are often good at craking down on this sort of thing. I don’t tend to think of human beings as pressure cookers who are likely to explode unless they are represented more fairly. I think this is also somewhat unfortunate.
wrt the Weimar republic, North Korea, etc – surely, the general point is that you don’t see massive violence, bodies in the street, etc, when one gang is firmly in control of the turf, you see them when the turf is being fought over. (As opposed to the opposition quietly being disappeared when necessary). Trouble tends to start when openings for it are seen, weakness is perceived ?
People as pressure cookers – maybe they sometimes are, sometimes not ? Recent events in Tunisia, Egypt, etc, seem to suggest that they do go “pop” sometimes ?
Roderick Russel, thanks for the background of motivation from the UK and its corporations.
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Angrysoba, your knowledge of political history far exceeds my own. However, I feel it is unlikely that Iran would have eventually suffered a revolution if the UK/US hadn’t trashed its democracy. That is one of the good points of democracy – the people can influence the state without resorting to violence. In this sense, authoritarian states do somewhat resemble pressure cookers. If there’s a choice between authoritarian repression Vs. representation and debate, my choice is the latter.
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No, the Snopes e-mail doesn’t directly mention Iraq. It reads “Why would anyone think that we should be at war with such nice, peaceful Moslems?!” The UK war with the highest profile at the time was in Iraq.
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“In fact, as we know, having “more representative” government doesn’t guarantee diffusing racial or political violence; Norway has proportional representation”
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OK, Norway has just suffered an atrocity, but surely you’re not suggesting that Norway is a flash-point of unusually concentrated racial tension? I thought everyone was surprised precisely because this sort of thing is rare in Norway.
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Angrysoba, are you attempting to make me clarify, or is this just discussion for the sake of it, or have you some other motivation? Whatever, I’d rather you just filled in detail that you feel I’ve left out. We don’t really seem to be in any serious disagreement.
Clark:
Wayne, your question: “My question to you then is how will be restore our position, improve the economy, fight crime, get national priorities and purpose…”…
You seem to be a left wing know it all set on taxing the successful etc etc. and laughing at my posts OK… but as the purpose is to learn, here is what I think concerning this topic:
Take a country such as Taiwan or South Korea. Let me qualify what I am going to say now so that there is no misunderstanding. These two countries are countries borne out of wars and conflcts and therefore will be naturally much more nationalistic than say the UK. OK, notwithstanding this fact, the impression one gets from visiting and working with these nations is that when a tax dollar (korean won or whatever) is invested by these governments in either of the three areas: government lab/civil service; industry; academia; then the other two areas will also benefit. The UK in my experience is not like that. If you invest a tax pound in government then they will hire one more civil servant. If they invest in academia then they will graduate one more PhD student in some non applied area; and if you invest it in industry then it will be stolen by the CEO into the bottom line and the intended action not done but painted as a success through lip service. The only way to counteract this is more control and to an extent more nationalism. You need the government to be believed by the people. You need a belief that good guys will also be in government (I mean highly qualified guys as in Germany). It seems we want similar things but the method is the difference. The method that you advocate I believe in fantansy land but the method that I advocate is strong immigration control and control with outsourcing and adding more prestige to home borne universities and professions.
You see that currently what is the dogma? It is “get the cheapest guy” and it is “do not invest just cost save”. It is a dogma that leads to outsourcing of all jobs: unskilled and technical jobs abroad. If they could, then these short turn, cost cutting CEOs would hire NOBODY in the UK other than a small team of fellow accountants and lawyers, and they would outsource all technical work abroad and they would cost cut so much that the firms that they own would implode but by then these CEOs, accountants, lawyers will move on to the next fat cow they wish to bleed.
The only way to start producing and to reverse this is to believe in strong government, and for that we do need to control the borders and prevent all sorts of things from happening. Take for example universities. The government praises universities but does not fund them. They in turn hire bogus students to survive. They have for many years hired people from abroad as professors. Now such professors from abroad chose (as all professors do) academics to join the faculty based on their preferences. Talk about racism?! you have Greek professors hiring greek lecturers; spanish professors hiring spanish lecturers, etc. It is a fallacy to think that only the best are hired. Very few of any faculty are people regularly publishing in Science or Nature. Now go to Germany or France or even Holland. It has been unusual for a foreigner to be in the faculty. Such positions are maybe not guarded but I think you will find the numbers reflect more nationals in such positions. If you go to the Far East (other than in Singapore) you will see a preponderance of nationals in such positions. I know you will say it is because we speak English and so the universities can hire from every place on Earth, and that is a topic of debate, but I believe we are not in charge of our institutions and our country and for that reason we have this problem of it not being possible to believe in the government. We are a nation divided by class and many other things. I think that we would benefit from a more British centred culture while inside of Europe.
Anyone feel like a lighthearted link?
This made me grin today:
http://www.newyorker.com/humor/2011/08/08/110808sh_shouts_simms
“You need the government to be believed by the people. You need a belief that good guys will also be in government (I mean highly qualified guys as in Germany). It seems we want similar things but the method is the difference. The method that you advocate I believe in fantansy land but the method that I advocate is strong immigration control”
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Ah, /now/ I get you. Thatcher should never have let Murdoch in. I’m with you on that one.
“Ah, /now/ I get you. Thatcher should never have let Murdoch in. I’m with you on that one.”
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Hee heeeee!
Hello Dreoilin, thanks for God’s blog. I particularly liked “S*H*O*E*S!!!”.
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Wayne, I give up. Bye.
“Hee heeeee!”
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(thanks)
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They come ‘ere, corrupt our coppers, steal our politicians, mess with our newspapers … I mean, I’m not bigotted, but …
Angrysoba, hello. How are you?
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“I think some people, particularly far right parties, are going to attract violent people and I don’t advocate changing a political system to placate those who would otherwise commit acts of violence. In fact, as we know, having “more representative” government doesn’t guarantee diffusing racial or political violence; Norway has proportional representation.” Angrysoba.
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Yes, I think that’s right. It’s more-or-less what I was saying to Evgueni, earlier. What I mean is, it’d be good to have more democracy, but not as a means to address extremist violence; I don’t think it does. Singapore is a very peaceful, safe place; it has multiple ethnic and religious groups. But it’s also very politically repressive. As I said, I think that psychos will be psychos will be psychos. They may be fired-up by propaganda or used by whomever, but I don’t think deficiencies in Norway’s political system caused Breivik to go out and murder 77 people.
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Nonetheless, our democracy has become rather corrupt and the three main parties have all signed-up to the same basic rubric. I think that is relevant wrt the UK.
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And as I said earlier on this thread, amdist the constantly repeated ‘Daily Mail’ tropes from the past 100 years, there is, and for many years has been, a problem with endogenous xenophobic, racist extremism in Europe.
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So, some of the problems raised by the commentators – rte. universities, industry, the economy, etc. – are real. The problem is, they always focus the ‘blame’ for just about everything on the same old same old.
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This reminds me a little of the problems depicted by Islamists – some of their criticisms, eg. re. corrupt puppet-regimes, etc. – are valid. In essence then, in terms of mentation, the Xenophobic Racist Right are calling for the equivalent of a nativist British ‘Caliphate’. Or Reich, or whatever the exotic/ Quixotic term might be.
“In essence then, in terms of mentation, the Xenophobic Racist Right are calling for the equivalent of a nativist British ‘Caliphate’. Or Reich, or whatever the exotic/ Quixotic term might be.”
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Yes. The Good Old Days. When television was black-and-white and so was everything else (to borrow from a different heron).
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I blame that Tolkien. Heck, why not ? At least it’d make a change.
“When television was black-and-white”
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Well, I nearly got it. movies.
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http://lyrics.wikia.com/Gil_Scott-Heron:B_Movie
Saruman, in the Ivory Tower. Yeah, Christopher Lee (Jinnah), Dracula. See – it all adds up!
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I blame Bilbo Baggins, myself. “My Precioussssss…”
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Leonary Nimoy once sang a pop song entitled, ‘Bilbo Baggins’. It’s almost as unbearably hilarious to watch as William Shatner’s Orphic outings.
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Sauron, Saruman, Satan, Stalin… why do so many baddies’ names begin with ‘S’? It’s not fair! Probably to do with snakes, God, the Garden of Eden and all that apple-dash.
“to borrow from a different heron” De Quincey’s Ghost.
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Oh, that’s good, De Quincey’s Ghost. That’s seriously good.
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Been on the spirit smokes again, De Quincey?