Hyperventilating Ego-Extravaganza

The old bag is at it again:

There is no peace and consequently, I (I, I, I !) have no peace. Every morning, I (I, I, I !) wake up to news about Muslims blowing each other up ... Yesterday, a friend ... told me (ME, ME, ME !) that Arab Muslims are taking over more and more Jewish Israeli land ... They are not allowing me (ME, ME, ME !) to have peaceful thoughts. Every week, sometimes every few days, I (I, I, I !) am informed that yet another Iranian woman has been ... Daily, the news from Afghanistan chills my (MY, MY, MY !) blood ... Thus, Muslims, among whom I (I, I, I !) once lived and whom I (I, I, I !) once loved, are giving me (ME, ME, ME !) no peace in my (MY, MY, MY !) older years. (The ones I (I, I, I !) knew and loved are either dead or living in exile in the West.) ... please explain to me (ME, ME, ME !) why Gretta Duisenberg ... is now suing my (MY, MY, MY !) friend and colleague the eminent Iranian-Dutch professor of philosophy and jurisprudence, Afshin Ellian, for calling her an “anti-Semite,” when she proudly calls herself an “anti-Semite.”

You get the point? The worst about the threat Islam poses to the West is that it causes Professor Chesler to suffer sleepless nights and doesn't allow her to have peaceful thoughts anymore. And now, finally, at last (we are relieved) to the purpose (apart from letting us know that the worst about the threat Islam poses to the West is that it causes Professor Chesler to suffer sleepless nights and doesn't allow her to have peaceful thoughts anymore) of this hyperventilating ego-extravaganza:

Leon de Winter and Abigail Esman are both asking us all to write on their blogs, in our articles, on our Facebook pages that we, too, believe that Gretta Duisenberg is an anti-Semite. In Dutch, de Winter says:

I invite all readers to support journalistic freedom and freedom of expression by writing ‘I, too, think Gretta Duisenberg is an anti-Semite.’

How many people can Duisenberg sue? Can she sue only one person if thousands, perhaps millions, are saying the same thing?

For Heaven's Sake! Almost exactly seven years ago, I (I, I, I !) and the Jerusalem Post called Gretta Duisenberg (and others) antisemites. Countless people must have done so as well before and since then. And now she (SHE, SHE, SHE !) needs to recruit "thousands, perhaps millions" to save her (HER, HER, HER !) "friend and colleague" from a fate worse than death? Give me a break!

In fact, a Google search for "gretta duisenberg antisemite" renders 398,000 results right now and a picture search shows countless pictures poking fun at the evil old Duisen-hag, even including the antisemitism-topic.

For Phyllis Chesler, the world revolves around one thing, Phyllis Chesler's arse. The fact that people take seriously what this lump of hormones blathers, is proof for the fact that feminism has won long ago.

I told you so, Americans!

Two years plus two weeks ago I wrote in an entry headed Labour of Love

While the well-meaning but -- to put it politely -- slightly one-dimensional Americans tend to throw a hearty "he was a patriot" after every dead Nazi towards hell because HE opposed immigration and THEY don't know their arses from their elbows, i.e. squat about German history, society and mentality, the Austrian liberal newspaper "Der Standard" gives us a more complex insight into the now dead mind of Jörg Haider, governor of the Austrian state of Carinthia, the man who thought that he could always get away with driving at more than 140 km/h on a road designed for 70 km/h.

The question to end all questions is whose fault it was that Haider turned into a Jew-hater -- no, let me rephrase: that "he resorted to political non-correctness". Don't fret, "Der Standard" knows why:

"One can regard his antiamericanism and his resorting to political non-correctness as a result of his questionable interpretation of the European past or as reaction to his own rejection, specifically by Israel, who had recalled her ambassador from Vienna when [Haider's then party] the FPÖ became part of the government in 2000. Also, Haider was probably looking out to extend his influence to the international stage, and nobody else wanted him.

Yes, we cried too. If he hadn't been such a cuss with his obsessive antiamericanism, VDare might have even thrown a dirt cheap regular column after him. Who knows, maybe they did and he politely declined. I'm sure he had, in his own way, higher standards than VDare and their ilk.

So Haider really loved the Jews, but, like with his parents before him, this love remained unreciprocated, whereupon he turned into a Jew-hater and flirted with Arab dictators who are, as we all know, nothing but frustrated lovers of the Jews as well.

[...]

The following day I wrote:

When will you Americans finally twig that THERE ARE NO "conservatives" in Germany and that those who can be considered "patriots" hate your guts and will get at your throat rather sooner than later, given the slightest opportunity, Haider and his ilk included. Why, do you think, are they all, left right and center, rubbing elbows even with the most despicable of Islamic dictators? Because they really like them? Their looks? Their smell? Their dress sense? You must be joking.

WHAT we have are brown-painted Socialists, Sacred-Heart Socialists, green-over-brown-painted Socialists, Communists and a tiny, hapless "liberal" party that used to be a receptacle for old Nazis after '45 and which has ousted itself from serious politics by their self-consciously cultivated image of a "fun party". [Edit: Here I was wrong. In the meantime the liberals have become part of the ruling coalition with its openly homosexual leader who recently "married" his "partner" as foreign minister.]

The staple of all of them is the hatred of America and Jews, which the not-brown-painted ilk insist to call "anti-Zionism" because they are such despicable hypocrites.

Just reminding, and read the comments to the latter entry as well.

Now it transpires that the German secret service Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND) paid for Haider's trip to Iraq in 2002, as Austrian weekly Profil reported on Sunday.

It seems that the BND was interested in Haider's Iraqi contacts and used the services of an unidentified Austrian businessman to organise the trip and pay for the flight. According to the report, the BND spent "several hundreds of thousands" of Euros in observing Haider and his activities. According to Profil, the BND declined to comment on the information.

Last August, Profil and other Austrian media reported that Haider deposited 45 million Euro (63 million USD) over the years in secret accounts in Liechtenstein. Allegedly, the money came from the Libya's Ghaddaffi and Iraq's Saddam Hussein.

I spell it out to you again: Before you start ecstatically drooling over some "anti-immigration" politician in Europe, ask some questions first. That isn't asked too much, or is it?

Germany at A Historic Turning Point?

We are living in a country where the economist Thilo Sarrazin was slandered by the Green politician Renate Künast as "debased" und "unfeeling" because he was quoting figures and statistics, in which a German-Turkish minister from Lower Saxony, who had tried to oblige the media to follow "culturally sensitive" speak when it comes to Turkish migrants, proudly states that she "doesn't need statistics and analysis" because she "knows migrants".

Humanity and life triumph over satanic statistics which reduce "people to numbers". Even the chancellor, herself a scientist, took up the new cuddly speak and let us know how she really felt. Everything else would mean to talk about one's own shortcomings anyway.

Because Thilo Sarrazin states what can't be denied: A minority refuses to integrate because they despise this society, its culture and the native population, whose representatives don't dare to demand the necessary respect. That is the main issue of the debate, which will now be hunted down and mopped up -- together with Thilo Sarrazin.

It is of previously unknown sleaziness what is sold to us as debating culture, as open-mindedness and vibrant multiculti. The representatives of the German-Turkish community are acting miffed and deny the problem.

Politicians are counting on votes from that clientele and nobody speaks up for the native population who have, very probably, reasons for not wanting to be told towards whom they ought to be culturally sensitive.

And Sarrazin? He is the whipping boy who is met with sheer and undiluted dehumanizing contempt and hatred, and who, despite of all this, tries in an almost touching way, again and again, to get across a reasoned argument.

All those involved have made utter fools of themselves with their phoney, hypocritical "humanity" and the majority of Germans now see Sarrazin as an upright, honourable man who has integrity and backbone and who lacks the slippery sliminess with which the others have made themselves unassailable.

The causa Sarrazin is a historic turning point for this country, and that doesn't suggest anything good.



This is a feature by rbb, a public law (state-controlled) broadcaster. The good thing is that, in its attempt to discredit Sarrazin, it shows the hypocrisy of the political and opinion making elite in full fly.

Obviously, Sarrazin has the charisma of a floor vase, which makes him rather more credible.

---

The above text down to the video is an excerpt and a rough translation of a radio commentary by Dr. Cora Stephan, political scierntist and journalist.

The video was dubbed with English subtitles by Vlad Tepes.

Thanks to both.

The Empress Wears an LBD No Clothes

Always worth a look, VFR discusses Ann Coulter's surprising decision to speak at a political convention for openly gay Republicans, Homocon 2010. One reader suggests that "female conservatives" like Coulter (or Sarah Palin) ought to be called "Republican Feminists", because "(t)hese type of women have, through some accident of circumstance, discovered that liberalism does not benefit them... But, they are not really conservatives. They just want to banish those parts of liberalism or feminism that do not benefit them." And: "This is why Ann Coulter has no problems with homosexuality. Women, in general, like gay men because it allows them to interface with men on a level they understand and in the absence of any sexual tension. Ann Coulter is like any other woman in this respect. Her conservatism goes out the window as soon as her status is under no real threat. The same thing with Sarah Palin." To which Lawrence Auster replied: "This needs to be fleshed out more. What are the parts of liberalism that do not benefit Coulter, or Palin?" Well, good question. What about: private property and a somewhat understandable aversion to the thought that in order to achieve "social justice" the government ought to own their revenues from book sales or speaking events?

By the way, the great mutual empathy between women and homosexual men is a myth by which only, somewhat endearingly, straight men are taken in, and to say that Ann Coulter might be (no matter the context) "like any other woman" is so mind-bogglingly insensitive that it defies belief.

Why would Coulter speak at such an event? Money? Hardly. She knows quite well that attention like that will alienate a lot of her core audience and that she'll lose more than she'll win. Does she think then that those homosexual Republicans have a legitimate cause? Good joke. My money is still on Coulter being homosexual herself. Should her shrivelled little black, well, heart really be in this, that would be an explanation of her utterly over-the-top reaction to Joseph Farah's criticism, a reaction which came across for once not as coldly calculating, but as genuinely deranged. But whatever.

At my German blog I commented in January 2008 that the punditesse was receiving lately some, albeit scant, notoriety in Germany, namely by the small and disorientated wannabe-neocon-faction, because she is so deliciously "different" and Germans like it masterful.

I wrote:

The problem is that we are satisfied with attacking an undefined Left, the more vocal the better, to be considered a "conservative". Any content, positive goals, commonsensical arguments or even a basic ethical consensus are superfluous, which guarantees somebody like Ann Coulter a secure, warm little place at the humble hearth of a "conservative" movement that is as free from perception as from shame.

I think that is still a pretty apt description of Coulter and those who will fall for her.

Say Goodbye to the Buttonpusher

Another case of First Amendment interpretation, closely following the controversy about the Ground Zero mosque: So the (for me, as a European) unspeakable "Dr. Laura" Schlessinger has lost her job because she used the word "nigger" in one of her broadcasts and now she's whining that that the "bullying and scary" tactics of the left are a direct threat to the First Amendment rights of anyone who dares to speak out in defense of traditional American values. What is the First Amendment about? It protects Americans from government censorship, it does NOT protect them from reactions by their peers/co-citizens, not from disapproval, pressure, criticism, indignation or from the forces of the market. Nobody tells this hypocritical old slattern that she can not spew her hate- and deliberately hurtful drivel. It's just that if "Dr. Laura's" sponsors don't like what she says or have something better to broadcast, they have every right to get rid of her. Here we have those two wonderful things in action America has given to the world and which stand for freedom and liberty. They are called "free market" and "public discourse".

And of course she was right about the caller, who expressed concern over her white husband's friends being racist, that if she's that "hypersensitive about color" and doesn't "have a sense of humor" she oughn't have married "out of (her) race". That said, this came, if the media reports are correct, after she said the word "nigger" 11 times in a string of expletives. OF COURSE that usage was intended to be -- and was -- provocative, even though she was "only quoting". However, I wonder, too, why somebody in such a predicament would go to that heartless bitch, of all people, for advice, and I wouldn't be amazed if she was framed.

It's not what she said, but how she said it, and it will never fail to amaze me how such a deliberately provovative and violative, vulgar and ungiving bitch, one that was exposed several times as a hypocrite to boot, was able to become a paragon of conservative values. It must have been because she knows how to push the right buttons of conservatives (and "conservatives"), as she knows, no doubt, how to push the buttons of her hapless audience.

I always thought humility was part and parcel of conservative values. I may be wrong. But whatever, now she's forced to learn a painful lesson in it. Good.

About 'amour propre' and 'faire référence'

Or: Where Are The Thinking Little Blogger's Role Models

A week or so ago Gudrun Eussner made us aware that Andrew Bostom accuses his erstwhile friend Robert Spencer of plagiarism. Shortly after, Lawrence Auster picked it up at VFR and added a photo to his entry where the three Eternal Pillars of Islam Critique look like what they finally turned out to be, a bunch of trolls. Any doubts we may have had about that so far have been safely removed.

The funny-ha-ha level on which Bostom deals with such a grave accusation is something we might expect at a blog like -- say -- this one, but not at a paragon's of serious Islam critique. When all is said and done, the only concrete accusation boils down to Spencer using a Maimonides-quote without crediting Bostom, who had found and used it first. Some of the other alleged, and rather unspecified, transgressions happened, mind you, in 2008.

All this said, there can't be the slightest doubt that the reason for Bostom's undignified, unsubstantiated and over-the-top attack on a former friend and ally is something totally and utterly unrelated to "Islam critique", and that is where this blog entry could end. "Andy" is certainly not the first and not the last paragon of something who unmasks himself in the end as an assclown. However, Lawrence Auster makes us aware that there are further aspects to this when he chides Spencer of narcissism (the pathological variant, no less!) because the latter stated that what Bostom did to him was akin to "give fuel to the Islamic supremacists and their enablers". Frankly, I fail to see that, and while Spencer is not the epitome of Islam critique, he is for many, and for many little bloggers as well, a figure to look up to as an expert and to go to for reference. Whether that is merited or not is a different question. It just is so and such a vile, basically unfounded and unfair attack might indeed give fuel to jihadists. Auster then goes on to add a hefty dose of Luke 18:9-12 to his criticism, which is a pity.

Si tacuisses, and all that, looking further into the matter, it becomes patently clear that Spencer (Geller isn't even in the picture) is really painfully miscast for this role, at least for a little blogger who does his (or her) homework. Case in point:

This is a common species of wishful thinking and willful blindness. Its proponents imagine that Islam is a Religion of Peace(TM) with no anti-Semitic elements (you know the drill, Islam reveres the "People of the Book," etc.), but it was corrupted by the Nazis. Thus all one needs to do to solve this problem is to eliminate the Nazi elements and call Muslims back to the true teachings of the Qur'an, and the jihad will end. How wonderful! Except it's completely fictional, and based on ignorance or denial of the jihad doctrine, Islamic supremacism, and Qur'anic anti-Semitism.

Note also what my estimable and indefatigable colleague and collaborator Pamela Geller has revealed about the Mufti of Jerusalem's role in the Holocaust, and his own radio broadcasts.

I am not a native English speaker, so my first thought was that is MUST BE my fault. He really wouldn't have said that Pamela Geller revealed something about the Mufti of Jerusalem's role in the Holocaust, and his radio broadcasts. So did he? Lets have a closer look:

Note also what my estimable and indefatigable colleague and collaborator Pamela Geller has revealed about the Mufti of Jerusalem's role in the Holocaust, and his own radio broadcasts

So she didn't publish it, she didn't make it known to a wider public, she didn't introduce the Mufti, his doings and his role in the Holocaust to her readership, no -- she REVEALED it. Merriam Webster informs us about the meaning of the verb "to reveal":

1 : to make known through divine inspiration
2 : to make (something secret or hidden) publicly or generally known
3 : to open up to view : display

Yes he did.

Fact is, this little blogger introduced the Mufti Hadj-Amin El Husseini and his role in the Holocaust to her readership, first on Friday, May 19, 2006 (Child Molesters Comparing Notes) then again on Saturday, May 20, 2006 (A Very Practical and Attractive Religion for Soldiers) and later repeatedly, the last time on December 17, 2009.

I relied on, and quoted, several sources already existing in the Internet, among them Tell The Children The Truth, La bibliothèque proche-orientale or Kosovo and the Holocaust: Falsifying History and ISLAM UNDER THE SWASTIKA: The Grand Mufti and the Nazi Protectorate of Bosnia-Hercegovina, 1941-1945, both by Carl Savich. At the time of my first entries about the Mufti, I advised my readers, too: "... or do a simple Google search, as the sources are too numerous to mention here." Here are the results of a Google search performed today including the parameters "mufti" and "broadcast". "Revealed", eh?

So what did Geller say? The link Spencer provides above leads to one of her usual shrill, PMS-ing and self-serving posts. Her (uncredited) quotes can be traced back, for example, to the website "The Empress' ooops... The Emperor's Clothes", and to the books "The Nazi Connection to Islamic Terrorism: Adolf Hitler and Haj Amin Al-Husseini" by Chuck Morse and "Icon of Evil: Hitler's Mufti and the Rise of Radical Islam" by David Dalin, John Rothmann and Alan Dershowitz.

Right! Pamela Geller "revealed" the truth about Hadj-Amin, invented the wheel and devised the Wonderbra. (Sorry, I couldn't resist!) And what that Robert Spencer makes I better don't say because even this blog has a lower bound to its tone, besides, we don't want to give fuel to jihadists and their enablers (ha ha). Is this "plagiarism"? Of course not. A term like that would lead us in the realms of academia or at least serious journalism. It is plain, simple and unabashed Internet attention whoredom on a par with some pimpled teens' bragging at an Internet social network about their sexual derrings-do. What little bloggers need is not a role model to look up to, but some clay-feet detector and a lot more self-reliance.

---

Here are some of my earlier Foo Foo (or is it Kermit?) and Miss Piggy posts:
Foo Foo and Miss Piggy Go Islam Critics
'German Patriot' Converts to Islam
Loose Apes with Razors
The Unembarrassables
Innocents Abroad

A Christian about Social Justice and Historic Guilt

I have been away over the weekend and a considerable work backlog, so all I do for now is retrieving this noteworthy commentary by Bruce Church from the blog bilges.

You said "America isn't doing too badly in balancing...personal freedom" and "social justice." I can tell you don't live here. It's disgusting. Here's what my commute is like. I drive home from work and see in the exurbs and countryside many McMansions and super-sized houses that must cost a fortune to heat, and then I pass the outskirts of a rundown neighborhood, and a fire station that has a sign saying there's a benefit for some family that has a child with cancer. In other words, the family already burned through its health insurance coverage fighting the cancer, and the family is bankrupt, and is in need of a donations from the community so they don't get evicted from their lowly home.

When Reagan was president, the top tax rate was lowered from 40% to 28%, and now it might be back up to 36%. What happened is many people got rich since the 1980s, but the poor remained poor. Women getting educated and entering the workforce didn't help the situation as one might suspect it would have, since the high earners tended to marry the high earners, making the couple twice as rich, thereby serving to increase the gap between rich and poor.

Because of this, the income inequity has increased in the US as measured by the Gini Index, so now the US ranks along with South American countries that have long been notorious for their poor/rich divide and lack of social mobility. This leads to a lot of crime since the poor on one continent sell drugs to the rich on another continent.

For the poor in the US, it's increasingly hard to get higher education and to break out of the generational poverty cycle.

The latest health care debate has exposed just how many people have vested interests in the status quo, and exactly how callous they are toward the poor.

Another area I've seen where the callousness is apparent is critics of aid programs don't like it that if the poor get extra money, they spend it on "sugary drinks." So they'd even begrudge the poor the simple luxury of Kool-Aid! See the links at the bottom of this post for more on that.

I seems to be bothered by the inequities of life more than other people, perhaps because I read my Bible and see that God's takes notice of, say, evicting a widow from her house in order to join houses together, the ancient version of todays McMansions that dot the American exurbs and countryside. I don't think God cares about how such deeds are laundered and impersonally done through financial "vehicles," and made to look extra-legal because the local sheriff is the one doing the evicting.

In the same way, I'm bothered when I read about Germans having great health care and spa treatments while Holocaust survivors are picking through garbage cans in Israel to get enough to eat. Also, the Germans and other European nations leave it up to America to defend the world while knowing America can only afford to do so at the expense of its poor.

One reason the US hasn't had nationalized health care is the people who would otherwise advocate on behalf of the poor already have excellent coverage via their union, or their state or church employers. Thus, pastors, union leaders and politicians actually come out against nationalized health care because they want to preserve their topnotch health care packages. For example, Mayor Rudy Giuliani of NY came out against nationalized health care because the US had slightly better prostrate cancer survival rates than the UK. What he didn't say was he survived his prostrate cancer thanks to being covered by NY City's health care package, something the average person in the US doesn't have access to. Another example is union leaders held up "Obama-Care" for months because they didn't want their "Cadillac" health care plans taxed, meaning their $25,000+ per year health care plans would be subject to a luxury tax. The compromise that got the unions' reluctant support is Cadillac plans won't have a luxury tax slapped on them until 2018. I've heard pastors say that Obama-Care will make US health care like Cuba's because more people will have access to good health care, yet the number of doctors and nurses will not increase for some years, and so the resources will be spread thin.

I don't believe in any racial component to guilt, however, there is a national and religious component to collective guilt. Also, I don't believe in trying to correct history and ruining the economy in order to make reparations, but I am for making amends where possible, and being sensitive about past historical wrongs.

I think that members of Lutheran and Catholic churches especially must admit that there is a long history of antisemitism in those churches, and that not only was this a factor in the Holocaust coming about, but it turned many people who could have stopped the evil into bystanders and even abettors. Also, in the Eastern Churches there was much Antisemitism, so in Ukraine and other places, no one put a stop to the mass killing of Jews, not even warning Jews to arm themselves or flee.

Members of nations and churches need to assume their share of the collective guilt associated with their respective church or nation, whether he/she, or his/her relatives, immigrated to a nation after the fact, or even a hundred years after the fact.

Immigrants should not be like many Muslim immigrants who, for example, move to Germany or Australia, and then disavow any connection to the dishonorable chapters of that nation's history, and have an attitude of moral superiority over the natives of their host nations. They also deny that by becoming a member of a host nation, they are in any way unfairly advantaged by past historical wrongs of that nation, and deny that they should make any personal sacrifice to make amends with the disadvantaged or victimized groups. (In the case of Australia, I'm talking about their former Aborigine policy).

-----------

Links:

People would begrudge poor even "sugary drinks":

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22sugary+drinks%22+%22deserving+poor%22&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=

http://jezebel.com/5341698/are-women-the-new-deserving-poor

They add that the world's poorest families spend ten times as much on "alcohol, prostitution, candy, sugary drinks and lavish feasts" as they do on education, and that "if poor families spent only as much on educating their children as they do on beer and prostitutes, there would be a breakthrough in the prospects of poor countries."
--
Reference Giuliani's cancer:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/spotlighthealth/2002-10-14-giuliani_x.htm
--
Gini Index:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gini_coefficient

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/01/Gini_since_WWII.svg

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/34/Gini_Coefficient_World_CIA_Report_2009.png

http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0908770.html

Thank you, Bruce, for this. I'll be back later.

Why am I not amazed?

Psychologists in Canada may have found out that people who become eco-conscious consumers are "more likely to steal and lie" than others. Authors of the study are Professor Nina Mazar of the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management and her colleague Chen-Bo Zhong. "Buying products that claim to be made with low environmental impact can set up 'moral credentials' in people’s minds that give license to selfish or questionable behavior."

You don't say!

The paper can be read in full online here (pdf-format).

Admiration as A Compulsory Exercise

On Friday, Navid Kermani, a Muslim writer and orientalist, was expelled from the awardees' list of the annual Hessian culture award because it had transpired that he had, as a good Muslim ought to, assigned from a great height a place in the back row to the Christian faith when he had stated (among other things) that the painting "Crucifixion" by the Italian baroque painter Guido Reni, that the crucifix is a blasphemous, pornographic and idolatrous image. In the Swiss newspaper NZZ, that was, and in one of those shallow, vain, blabbering "reflections" we know him for and which go down only too well with only too many.

The state of Hesse had intended to award their 45,000 Euro prize jointly to a Jew, a Muslim, a Catholic and a Lutheran to honour the cultural achievements of the monotheistic religions.

Notoriously liberal Cardinal Karl Lehmann of Mainz for once balked and refused to share the award with Navid Kermani, as did Peter Steinacker, former head of the Lutheran church of Hesse and Nassau.

The board then wrote to Kermani, withdrawing the award. The fourth recipient is Jewish, Salomon Korn, vice president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany and leader of the Frankfurt Jewish congregation.

Reactions were predictable. The speaker of Germany's parliament (according to the order of precedence Germany's second-highest ranking official after President Horst Köhler) Norbert Lammert, a member of the Christian Democratic Union, Catholic, denounced the board's turnabout, saying "If this is true, they should abolish the prize altogether ... Culture is nice, tolerance too, but one can't have both without making a big effort." It ought not to be forgotten that there will be federal- and elections for the European parliament held soon and that the Iranian contacts of businessmen close to the CDU are not to be neglected, needing, indeed, big efforts.

Aiman A Mazyek, secretary of the Central Council of Muslims, who thinks that it's quite alright to make jokes about the Prophet Mohammed as long as one does not talk about his flaws, said to the Berlin newspaper Tagesspiegel: "How would they have felt if a Muslim had refused to meet a churchman because he did not revere the Prophet Mohammed?" The question is not how they would have FELT, but what they would have DONE, Aiman. respectively what they would have NOT done.

But that isn't the whole story. Largely ignored by the mainstream media remained the fact that Kermani hadn't been the first choice for the award. That had been the Muslim Fuat Sezgin. Sezgin had refused to accept the award together with the Jew Salomon Korn whose view of the situation in Gaza Sezgin found objectionable.

Notabene that it's quite alright for the German media that a Muslim rejects an award because of insurmountable cultural differences with a Jew, but not if a Catholic does exactly that to a Muslim.

Just who is this particular Muslim? Navid Kermani, born in Germany to Iranian parents, who gets much acclaim as both, an orientalist and as a protagonist of "moderate Islam", is married to Katajun Armipur, another orientalist and protagonist of "moderate Islam", as well as another "Germano-Iranian" (as the politically correct description goes). Armipur has gotten some fame (or is it notoriety?) when she had stated that "even thinking about replacing stoning with other punishments is a step in the right direction" when in August 2004, in the Iranian town of Neka, a 16-year-old girl was hanged because of "unchaste behaviour". Kermani and Armipur are considered models of well-assimilated, "moderate Muslims" from whom we can learn a lot and whose admiration is a compulsory exercise. Notabene, too, that media darling Kermani's Habilitationsschrift, an orgiastically acclaimed effort, was in great parts lifted fom the epochal work "Das Meer der Seele" by the peerless and long dead German orientalist Hellmut Ritter, as Gudrun Eussner substantiates in her article (sadly in German only) "Hellmut Ritter: Das Meer der Seele - und der Tümpel von Navid Kermani" (Helmut Ritter: The Sea of the Soul and Navid Kermani's Puddle).

Different from another case of multicultural enrichment, I do not think that Kermani makes up his shit arbitrarily as he goes along, but that it is cooly calculated. However, what I then said about a society that showers those "culture-enrichers" with acclaim still stands: Only in a country like Germany, with that dangerous mixture of self-hatred and denial and without any moral and ethical compass, phonies like him can become the media darlings of the unenlightened masses. In any sane society he would have been laughed out of the door ages ago.

Edited to add:
Yesterday night, when I finished this, it seemed so self-evident that I didn't say it. In broad daylight there seems something to be missing, so here it is: If anything shows that there is no "dialogue" with Muslims possible, it is this carefully calculated mixture of open insults, taqiyya and half-truths, wrapped in the smugly chic and vain harangue of an educated -- WESTERN educated -- intellectual.

Rent-A-Nazi

Since the Gleiwitz incident, Germans know the importance of the media. Politically Incorrect really seems to be on to something, so here it goes:

The Pro-Köln rally had been attended by two, seemingly ubiquitous, archetypical neo-Nazis, one small and one large, who had conspiciously caught the interest of the media. WDR-cameraman Oliver Köhler had filmed at the railwaystation from which they (notabene!) departed already and several times more for his report all through the event. (Here it is, sadly in German only, and it seems that the comments have been removed.) What is rather funny is, that the report sneeringly refers to Pro-Köln as a "self-appointed citizens' movement". Yeah right! A true, genuine, credible German "citizens' movement" has to be appointed by the state! So what else is new? That little statement says more about Germany than an entire library full of history books could. Notabene, too, that the bigger one of those two clowns is wearing a T-shirt with an imprint on the back (oh-so-subtly in Gothic type print) saying "Your gallows are already being built". During the national anthem he and his buddy acted, as PI put it correctly, "provocatively pompous". (Yes I know, what they did it is not considered "provocatively pompous" in America, but believe me, it is here.) And when the counter-protesters started to riot, they immediately joined the fray to provoke them even more.

It seems as if the entire media had been focusing on those two guys, and when I picked the pictures for my brief report of the rally, which was mainly an account of the partly moronic, partly violent, counter-rally, I somewhat "naturally" picked a picture of the fat one as a picture of a pro-Pro-Köln attendee, because it seemed to be the only one that was there, respectively the only one that was quickly available (second picture from the bottom). I do see now that it gives an entirely warped meaning to what I was trying to convey.

But the story doesn't end here. When the police was asked by a Pro-Köln official to remove the two punks, they refused, stating only the chairman of the event could do that. And that was where Manfed Rouhs made a mistake. He did exactly that and lo and behold, the press corps HAD their picture of "Manfred Rouhs and a rightwinger", offensive T-shirt-imprint and all. Can it get any more obvious than that?

The man was then asked to cover his T-shirt with a jacket.

So far, nobody knows who those two men are and that, when virtually every neo-Nazi in Germany is under heavy observation and the relevant organisations as heavily infiltrated by the inland security. In fact, most offices of that valiant organisation would have to be closed down, were the NPD ever to be banned. Yet nobody seems to recognize them.

Comment 116 of the PI-entry delivers some credible information, including a link to Indymedia, indicating that the counter-protesters were less than pleased with the police's cooperation, a cooperation, mind you, allegedly arranged before the event. As an aside: The anti-opression freethinkers at Indy are referring as well to Pro-Köln as a "self-appointed citizens' movement", proving thus once again that they are just the totalitarian scum as which they hate to appear.

Kudos to Pro-Köln who have at least achieved one thing: To unmask the Cologne "democratic" institutions as what they are.

---

Pictures from the PI-entry.

A Fission Fungus' Account from Cologne...

Or: Nazis don't go where they are not welcome

UPDATE Wednesday, May 13:

PI is backpedalling. In an entry headed "The Congress - An Alternative Review", they offer a more nuanced account of the events at Cologne. And before I get a dressing-down from a great height by the mighty Baron Bodissey or some other frightfully important Internet-opinion-maker, I better say that I am not privy to all the private correspondence that is bound to have passed back and forth before this entry was published and that my advice to myself is not to jump to conclusions and just translate some brief excerpts from it.

This is about some invited speakers and their statement, that said a lot about Überfremdung and little of criticism of Islam. [We thematized that phenomenon here.]

About Petra Edelmannova, chairman of Narodni Strana ([Czech] National Party) which clocked up a whopping 0.17% at the last elections, who talked in her speech a lot about democracy and sacred duty to resist, we learn that she intends to push for a „final solution in the gipsy question“.

... Apart from that [so Edelmannova] there wasn't any genocide and the 326 victims [at a certain camp], mostly children, were responsible for their own death because of lack of hygiene.

[...]

Of course, the organizers knew all this, they had even been made aware of it by PI. That Edelmannova was graced with a speech at the main rally nevertheless is amazing only if one refuses to recognize the history of Pro Köln. "Gypsies" are targets of their hatred since they were up to their tricks as "Deutsche Liga für Volk und Heimat"...

PI-reader Hufeland writes:

I found it rather disgusting how Beisicht at the rally applauded every sentence of the right-wing extremist Czech Edelmannove (…) With such allies one can not win over voters with traditional conservative vaues...

[...]

Somebody like Wilders from Holland knows why he isn't playing court jester for Beisicht and his cronies, (…)

[...]

Another guest of honour of the congress, Robert Spieler, chairman of the French Nouvelle Droite Populaire, published on August 28, 2007 an enthusiastic article justifying the Iranian activities to build an atomic bomb, which will be, in contrast to the American ones at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, only be used for determent purposes... In his speech he totally missed the topic in that he decried "political banks" and capitalism. [We thematized the fact that those valiant "conservatives" have nothing against Islam as such here as well.]

Later in the article, they quote the statement of Norbert Gehrig, which originally triggered off this entry.

And now I can only hope that you-know-who-you-are will read this, as he read the original entry, and go again crying at you-know-whom-I-mean's bosom, telling that he hasn't seen any (but ANY!) trace of a Nazi-presence so that you-know-whom-I-mean can then pass it on to me again, and will, again, get no reply from me in that matter.

But hey I've changed my mind! You-know-who-you-are WILL get one, here and now and on my terms: You say: "I have not seen red-white-black flags (the flag of Imperial Germany) at the rally." So what? Norbert Gehrig didn't say A THING about black-white-red FLAGS, he mentioned flag stickers (pin stickers or embroidery) on basecaps. You CAN read? And yes, Imperial Germany had black-white-red flags. Let's say, for argument's sake (And WOW! DO I love this argument!) that there HAVE been people carrying flags of Imperial Germany. By your reasoning they would be innocent, oldfashioned, conservative monarchists, right? By all let this be heard: Should people carry Imperial German (i.e. black-white-red) flags at rallies, they will be invariably, always, without exception and per definitionem ... what? Yes, you've got it: Nazis! Because Nazis always do that. They do that first to yank the state's chain because the Imperial flags are legal, and second because it gives them the oportunity to gather under something that looks as closely as legally possible like a Nazi flag.

Oh! You didn't know that? One mighty opinion maker more shooting his mouth off without knowing A THING? So what else is new? I, for one, have at least learned one thing during this entire sordid affair: Namely that the importance of a blog has nothing (but NOTHING!) to do with the intellectual capacity behind it, and when I have finished lighting a candle at the altar of Sancta Simplicitas I will come back and tell you what I REALLY think.

Seems somebody has taken the razor away from the ape for the time being. But I guess it's still on the loose.

Start of the original article:

Here is a comment by one of the regular commenters at the German blog Politically Incorrect (see my sidebar) on PI's account of the Pro-Köln rally:

#236 Norbert Gehrig (09. Mai 2009 22:03)

Also ich war wohl auf einer anderen Demo in Köln.

Ich lese hier Dinge die ich vollkommen anders erlebt habe..

Schon auf dem Bahnhof in Leverkusen wurden wir Frankfurter von der Front National aufgefordert,Abstand zu halten. Grund : Unser Fahnen- Israel Fahnen.

Auch die Polizei hatte wohl Probleme die Situation einzuordnen und bildete zeitweise eine Schutzkette vor uns und hinter uns. Ich muss die Polizei für Ihr verhalten loben. Umsichtig und vorausschauend. Sie verstanden zwar nicht warum wir da waren (wir im Laufe der Veranstaltung auch immer weniger), wären aber am Schluss der Veranstaltung bereit gewesen, uns separat auszuschleussen. Zu der Zeit war unser Gruppe über 20 Mann stark.

Ich schreibe nicht weiter. Nein. Ich hatte die Augen offen. Sind keinem die vielen Jugendlichen mit den Rot Weis Schwarzen Fahnenstickern auf den Baseballmützen aufgefallen, die Aufdrucke auf den T-shirts?

Macht die Augen auf Leute. Islamkritiker kommen aus den verschiedensten Schichten. Aber National-Sozialisten und ihre Nachfolger zählen nicht dazu. Die NS Elite war Anhänger der Islamfaschisten, der Großmufti von Jerusalem lebte bis 45 in Berlin.

Und Nazis gehen nicht dahin, wo sie nicht willkommen sind.

Front National war laut einer Pro Köln Aktivistin eingeladen. Sie forderte mich auf, nicht als “Spaltpilz” zu wirken.

Wer schwarz weiß rote Farben trägt, vertritt keine demokratische Vereinigung.

Weder mit National- Sozialisten Nachfolgern, noch mit ihren angeblichen Gegnern der Antifa, mit der sie die Ideologie teilen, sich nur nicht über den Weg einig sind, werde ich gemeinsam arbeiten.

Schwarz Rot Gold ist die Farbe der Republik.

Toll war das Zusammentreffen mit der Christlichen Gruppe aus Köln. Aber wir standen gemeinsam zwischen den Fronten.

Pro Köln hat ein gutes Stück Arbeit vor sich. Durch Taten beweisen, dass sie nichts mit diesen Leuten zu tun haben. Durch Taten..

norbert.gehrig@yahoo.de

---

I must have been at a different rally in Cologne.

What I am reading here is totally different from what I have experienced.

At the railway station in Leverkusen [a nearby town] already, our group from Frankfurt were asked by Front National to keep away from them. Reason : Our Israel banners.

The police, too, must have had difficulties to draw the correct conclusions and formed from time to time a chain to shield us. Kudos to the police, they acted diligently and far-seeing. Although they didn't understand why we were there (a view we started to share increasingly as the rally went on), they were willing to lead us safely from the scene after the rally was over ...

... Have none of you noticed the many young people with the black, white and red banner-stickers on their basecaps? The imprints on their t-shirts?

Keep your eyes open, folks! Islam critics come from all walks of life, but National-Socialists and their successors are not among them. The NS-elite followed the Islam-fascists, the grand mufti of Jerusalem used to live in Berlin until 1945.

And Nazis don't go where they are not welcome.

Front National was, according to a Pro Köln activist, invited. She asked me not to be a "fission fungus" [i.e. divisive].

Those who wear black, white and red colours do not stand for democracy.

I will work with neither, National-Socialist successors nor their alleged enemies, the Antifa, with whom they share the ideology and just can't agree on a mutual path.

Black red and gold are the colours of the Rebublic.

Meeting the Christian group from Cologne was just great. But we were caught together between two fronts.

Pro Köln has a lot of work to do. They'll have to prove by their deeds that they have nothing to do with those people. By their deeds.

And now Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer can go and email Norbert Gehrig that he must have seen things that only exist in Charles Whatshisname's imagination and that they only cancelled their attendance because Charles Whatshisname might have drowned their cyber rubber duckie had they attended, same Charles can tell Norbert Gehrig that it was MUCH worse because he says so and that he (N.G.) is a "Euro fascist" for attending at all. No doubt, all the other valiant and eminently knowledgeable experts of Germany, German culture, history and society and the German political scene on the strength of Robert Shaw's performance in "Battle of the Bulge", from B, like Baron Boddissey, to B, like Brussels Journal, can, and hopefully will, enlighten Norbert Gehrig as well.

And all that while we are scared witless about what might happen to us.

The Emperor Has No Clothes, The Empress Even Less

There is more about the wishful-thinking-science at VFR. One of the commenters says:

...this is not a serious scientist, but a women who does not quite have control over her personal desires.

A true, if pleonastic, statement. And exactly what will happen, if women are let loose on science.

Loose Apes with Razors

It goes on and on and on and on. Let them side with their own worst enemies. Fine! But they are playing, like a loose ape that has somehow grabbed a razor, with OUR future as well. This time it's at Gates of Vienna. My opening phrase refers to an earlier comment of Baron Bodissey:

May I paraphrase your words, Baron?

You are not privy to all the private correspondence that passes back and forth between German Islam critics. My advice to you is not to jump to conclusions regarding an unanimous stance of those behind "Politically Incorrect", or indeed, all German "anti-Jihadists" in the matter of Pro-Köln.

When will you (plural) finally understand that there ARE NO "conservative" parties in Germany? If you still want to go to bed with them, that's fine, but you ought at least to know what you may catch and for heaven's sake stop selling those guys as what they clearly aren't to unsuspecting Americans. You are playing, like the proverbial ape with the razor, with OUR, the Germans' future. That said, when will you (plural) learn that anything (but ANYthing!) with "Pro" followed by something German is per definitionem bound to belong to the vilest America-hating faction?

And now comes the sadly mandatory disclaimer: Whatever Pro-Köln is and whatever all the other "Pro" groups are, they are legal and their treatment by the authorities is shameful, to say the least. However, it doesn't make them any less miscast as saviours of our Western culture.

The Israel-banners at "Pro" rallies are largely due to Stefan Herre, the founder of Politically Incorrect, who is as nice as a guy can be, but who doggedly refuses to see the "Pros" as what they are. Maybe that is some more information to which you are not privy. Well, now you are.

By the way, I am published at the English section of "Politically Incorrect", just to make clear where I stand.

The Unembarassables

Pamela Geller ("Fearless, intelligent, beautiful -- Pamela Geller wears her Supergirl costume well ... is a dynamo of energy and a paragon of courage and fearlessness." Spencer about Geller) and Robert Spencer ("Robert Spencer is the leading voice of scholarship and reason in a world gone mad. If the West is to be saved, we will owe Robert Spencer an incalculable debt." Geller about Spencer) (Yes, we cackled too!) have cancelled their trip to Cologne.

Politically Incorrect says that the withdrawal was due to Charles Johnson’s of LGF infame attacks on Pro-Köln, as a "fascist" organization. Wow!

What could have cyber-Charlemagne done to them? Send them a cyber curse for cyber-fascists? Cyber-clobber them with a cyber-fascism-cudgel? Cyber-drown their cyber-rubber duckie? Seriously, there is only one sensemaking reason for them to continue to defend their wannabe-hosts when they have cancelled their attendance, namely that they've gotten cold feet in the face of the many information on Pro-Köln they have gotten from serious Islamcritics in Germany (some of which I have seen) who know a thing or two more about their own country than our Innocents Abroad. And being the unprincipled attention seekers they are, they are now blaming CJ for it, so as not to close any doors to potential future appearances. (Yes, I know, the latter is an assumption.)

DISCLAIMER START

At this point, a disclaimer is called for: We do NOT deny Pro-Köln the right to host such an anti-Islam event. The way the city of Cologne is handling this shows that they have not yet arrived at democracy and probably never will. They do everything to marginalise, even foreclose, Pro-Köln's, a legal party's, activities, for example by banning a march to the building site of the gigantic DITIB-mosque, while they are tolerating next to the magnificent Cologne cathedral a permanent vile Israel-baiting exhibition. Such a march can not be "protected", or so Cologne police chief Klaus Steffenhagen says, which is unquestioningly repeated by the media. Gudrun Eussner says: Many events licensed by the authorities, which do not need to be protected, take care that the anti-Islamisation congress can not be protected." And:

Is it radical Left anarchists who are deciding now who is allowed to rally here and who isn't? Are they allowed to break the monopoly of the state on the use of force and does the police take it for granted?

The answer is: yes.

DISCLAIMER END

However, legal as Pro-Köln may be, a few questions regarding their legitimacy may be in order.

First and above all, their criticism of Islam is opportunist. Markus Beisicht, co-founder and chairman of Pro-Köln and Pro-NRW confirms in an Interview with the Junge Freiheit that "Islamkritik" is for Pro-Köln and Pro-NRW not more than part of a right-wing party project. Islamisation has become such a crucial topic for so many people and basically fits into a catalogue of "rightwing" issues that they picked it up and had been amazed how well it was received. "Specifically in big cities one can score here." They have, as Beisicht puts it, claimed a "market niche" and thus reached voters who wouldn't have elected them otherwise.

In other words and as Gudrun Eussner puts it: While looking for befitting issues for a party-project, Pro-Köln has found Islamisation. Therefore it might have been a different topic as well, had it only served the purpose of attracting voters.

Many "nationalist" European parties are, also, not quite the knights in shining anti-Islamic armour as which American Islam critics are fond of seeing them. Front National and FPÖ, for example, have nothing against Islam as such as long as Muslims are safely staying in their own countries. The Pro-movement shares this point of view, therefore their catchphase is "Against Islamisation and Überfremdung(1)", two terms, often used together. It is typical that both, left- and rightwing extremists, have nothing against Islam as such because of their natural affinity to a totalitarian polit-ideology like Islam. If it comes push to shove, rightwingers will club together with Muslims, be it against the Serbs or against the Jews, thinly veiled as anti-Zionism. Case in point: March 1999, Manfred Rouhs, later to become a Pro-Köln co-founder, supports the terrorist UCK in the Kosovo, who are - for him - liberation nationalists.

What says Robert Spencer in his own words at Jihad Watch?:

Meanwhile, I am not going to the Cologne conference, contrary to Johnson's claims; still, however, he is trying to defame me with it. From here is the claim that I am "defending" Manfred Rouhs of Pro-Köln, whom Johnson claims is a Nazi, because I posted his pro-Israel statement here. (You know you're in Johnson's Bizarro world when posting a pro-Israel statement gets you accused of being a Nazi.) Rouhs, says Johnson, is a Nazi who sells Nazi literature at his website -- and therefore I must be a crypto-Nazi, right? (Buckley's sage advice to Gore Vidal comes to mind at this point.)

Anyway, about Rouhs' book selection at his website: Rouhs sells material, as you can see, by the noted neo-Nazis Noam Chomsky, Michael Moore, Samuel Huntington, Norman Finkelstein, and Clausewitz.

Ah, but all that is just a cover for the Nazi literature that he sells, that Charles has found, right?

This is so incredibly, intransigent, rock-hard, impermeably and unforgivingly dumb that it almost left me speechless. That and the fact that it saves a lot of gastric acid to be prepared for either, those innocent, wide eyed requests for "proof" from those who then nick my information to post it as their own wisdom elsewhere (you know who you are), or those who think that Europe is just the 51st state of the US of A and are miffed when told that "right wing" has a somewhat different meaning at this side of the Atlantic, makes this entry a bit belated, but the open questions are still as topical as they were a week ago.

Such as: Does Spencer really not know for what Chomsky, Moore and Finkelstein stand? No, they are not "Nazis". In that he is right. Two of them are even Jewish and don't we all know that Jews can't be Nazis? They don't wear a black or brown uniform and they are not goosestepping around, brandishing swastika-ed banners. Should the truth be really too subtle to be understood by Robert Spencer and his likes?

Maybe. Let's start with Noam Chomsky. Maybe it was really too much trouble to find out that he is published by the Italian Neo-Nazi-publisher Barbarossa, right between the vilest Nazi scum, such as Jacques Isorni, the lawyer of Robert Brasillach:

Il Processo Brasillach - Jacques Isorni - € 6,20

More from Barbarossa:

Il Controllo dei Mass Media. Le spettacolari conquiste della propaganda - Noam Chomsky - € 7,00

La Menzogna di Giuda. I perché di un libro scomodo - Centro Studi Orion - € 5,16

Rivolte e Guerre Contadine. Storia non romanzata degli Stati Uniti d’America - Aa. Vv. - € 13,00

La Rivoluzione Fascista. Antologia di scritti politici a cura di A. Cucchi e G. Galante; in appendice articoli di J. Evola e R. Farinacci - Berto Ricci - € 8,00

You got the gist?(2)

Now Norm Finkelstein: The German translation of this upright anti-fascist's oeuvre is, for example, sold at the Neo-Nazi online shop Weltnetzladen, between books that reveal the genocidal and perverted nature of the bible, or those of Dr. Claus Nordbruch ("Machtfaktor Zionismus") who is fond of drooling over Germans as genocidal targets of Britain and America when he isn't stridently demanding "reparations" for a wronged Germany who was dealt a marked card in WWII and next to titles like "Ami go home!" or "Zwölf gute Gründe für einen Antiamerikanismus" (i.e. twelve good reasons for, you've guessed it, antiamericanism).(3)

But without doubt, Chomsky and Finkelstein are no Nazis and we all know how much Michael Moore loves America.

Even a superficial dig like this reveals such a cesspool of totalitarianism, antiamericanism, antisemitism, history revisionism and God knows what -isms, that it seems -- and indeed is -- totally irrelevant whether one labels it Nazi, or left or right or center or whatever. It is a kraken with countless tentacles obsessively feeding on its sole fodder, the hatred for America, the Ersatz-Jew and Israel, the Über-Jew. And it reaches far into the realms of other groups and parties as well, groups and parties much more respected and important than hapless Pro-Köln.

I have written about it countless times. It is the core topic of this blog. So what else is new?

The question remains whether it is asked too much from Robert Spencer to do some research. Brief, basic research, as I just did, in the Internet, would suffice. Nobody expects a crash-course of twothousand years of European and German history and culture from him. His Wikipedia entry tells us that he holds a Master's degree in the department of Religious Studies from an American university, so we can assume (or is it hope?) that he knows how to do research, to tell apart the important from the unimportant, not to let his personal opinions get in the way of the truth, and that he is able to perform a critical appraisal of his sources. That is not even intellectual integrity, that are the very basics of academic armamentarium, science 101. But the urge to be right when Charles Johnson is wrong is so overwhelming that Spencer, dumb and dull like the moron he isn't, happily commits intellectual suicide just not to be thrown out of his fool's paradise of feeling superior to Charles Johnson.

What an achievement.

---

(1) "For years Austrians have been warned about foreigners, indeed, about an inundation of foreigners. In 1993 the word "Überfremdung" - being overrun with foreigners - was declared the non-word of the year in Germany. Yet in 1999 a successful election campaign could be conducted in Austria with the slogan "Stop the excessive immigration." The word "Überfremdung" is hardly translatable, because the German language does not know the differentiation found in English, Italian, or Spanish between stranger and foreigner." See here.

(2) It is all available on the web. Dr. Gudrun Eussner, a political scientist, writes about it at her invaluable website for years now.

(3) Or, for example, a "conservative" book on bringing up children by Christa Müller, the wife of one of the leaders of the post-Communist party DIE LINKE, Oskar Lafontaine. By Spencer's logic, the entire shop would be above board on the strength of such immaculate leftist credentials.

Innocents Abroad or Fool's Paradise

There is a major brouhaha going on among "Islam critics" because Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer have announced that they may attend the Anti-Islamization Congress of the German Pro-Köln movement in May. Invectives are bandied about liberally and there is little room left between "Poster Girl for Eurofascists" resp. "publisher of the anti-Islam Internet hate site "Jihad Watch"" on one side, and "dynamo of energy and a paragon of courage and fearlessness" resp. "the leading voice of scholarship and reason in a world gone mad" on the other.

Whatever they are, neither Geller nor Spencer are doing themselves a favour by posting inane statements like the one claiming that one of the leading members of Pro-Köln isn't a Nazi because . . . he says so.

Manfred Rouhs, a Pro-Köln member of the city council, is not a neo-Nazi. Here is a statement from Rouhs:
"blah blah yabber yack yack..."

Unbelievable!

I have blogged about Pro-Köln and other branches of the "Pro"-movement before. They are not "Eurofascists" (what sort of hollow epithet is that anyway) and, as I said before, they are attracting quite a few wellmeaning, decent citizens who are just desperate because the mainstream parties are exposing them helplessly to the Islamic threat. But they are not, by no stretch of the imagination, either, the clear-cut democrats, freedom lovers and defenders of Western values as which American conservatives doggedly insist to see them.

I am committing a major transgression now. I am quoting -- horribile dictu -- from LGF, the blog of Charles Johnson, ring leader in the open season on Geller and Spencer. And appreciatively to boot, which makes me now a liberal pinko commie leftist and ally of Evil Charles. But whatever. In a comment, the German blogger Gegenkritik states:

Hey all. Something more about pro Köln: their "pro-Israel"-stance is relatively new, it's mainly PI-news-founder Stefan Herre, who appears at their demonstrations with israeli-flags. He was also the one to interview former CDU deputy mayor of district Cologne-Ehrenfeld (where the mosque will be built), Jörg Uckermann, who is now one of the leading figures of pro-Köln, and it was Herre who convinced him to to take a "pro-Israel"-stance.

Some years ago, pro-Köln was openly hostile towards Israel: here's a leaflet (Google translated) that was handed out by pro-Köln's student-organization, entitled "Solidarity with Palestine!". You'll find the typical anti-zionism in it: Israel is waging war against the Palestinians, Ariel Sharon is seeking for cruel vengeance, the German Goverment should not deliver weapons but put pressure on Israel.
Two years ago, pro-Köln defended the stance of the German Bishops, who compared the situation of the Palestinians with the Jews in the Warsaw-Ghetto (Here is a LGF-post about this).

To be fair, all this is still not a real Nazi-position, and it is the common stance of 90% of Germans. But there is more: their agitation against the planned Jewish museum in Cologne. The background: after the destruction of most Jewish buildings in Cologne in the Nazi-era, a private foundation was fundraising for a museum about the Jewish history in Cologne. The foundation got the building permission, but suddenly, nearly all media as well as the city council were against the museum.

The only newspapers that were still in favor of the planned museum, were those of the Axel Springer AG, who are often attacked by leftists, muslims and Neonazis alike because of their Corporate principles ("To promote reconciliation of Jews and Germans and support the vital rights of the State of Israel"). Neonazis and other Anti-semites often take this point to lament about the "jewish controlled media" ("Verjudete Presse" was the original slogan in the Nazi-era) and it's very clear that pro-Köln is referring to this.

All this shows, that pro-Köln's pro-Israel-attitude is essentially a fake.

The only thing that is wrong with this is that it was published at LGF and will so inadvertently support Charles Johnson's unconsidered, uncalled-for and crude smearing of everybody and his pet ferret of whom he doesn't approve as a "fascist". Had Gegenkritik sent this statement to some conservative bloggers it might have triggered off some second thoughts.

Might. But I doubt it.

Anyway, now, as it appeared at the dreaded LGF, it CAN NOT BE RIGHT in the eyes of those who know everything already. Wanna bet? Not facts count, but where they appear and whether one likes them.

My blog has a fair ranking at Technorati, specifically for a one-woman-effort, at one time it used to be in the fortythousands, but I am not complaining. My SiteMeter count varies greatly, depending on how much blogging I do. My best result ever was well over 400 page views a day. That was, interestingly, for this entry. So I know I am at least read. I am decrying for years now the grotesque, hysterical (but strategic) exaggeration of the "rightwing danger" in Germany. In fact, it is one of the main topics at this blog. I decry as well the fact that people who stand for politically non-correct ideas are denounced as "right wing populists" (ever met a "left wing populist", by the way?) or "right wing extremists". Believe me (but you won't) I know a Nazi when I see one and if Charles Johnson says so too, he is STILL right, although his may be the factuality of a broken clock.

I believe I have established over the years the reputation of an intellectually honest blogger and a diligent researcher, and, as the Gegenkritik-blogger proves, I am not the only one who dares to question the wishful thinking of only too many conservative Americans who seriously think that Germany, that little country from which went out so much good and so much evil, Germany, with its almost twothousand years of history, Germany, with its multitude of age-old people, cultures and traditions within such a limited territory, Germany, which therefore never achieved true national unity, Germany, shaken in its foundations by the Reformation, something from which it is still suffering, Germany, that, historically, always took a different path from other West European nations, is just as easily comprehensible as their own relatively recently colonialised empty slab between two oceans. They seriously think that, because they know yodelling and Panzerlied, that they have a grasp of the German culture and mind and that they know better than educated, thoughtful, native Germans. There is, after all, Babelfish or Google to deliver quality translations of German copy from which one can then cherrypick what one would like to believe. THIS ARROGANCE MAKES ME SICK!

Not that the LGF-blogger is any more hot on fact-finding. The other day he informed us that Politically Incorrect, the major Islam-critic among the German blogs is a "pro-fascist German website". How he can know that without any knowledge of German is beyond me, but it would be presumptuous to presume presumptuousness only in the conservative camp. PI is blog number one among ALL political blogs in Germany, which shows how dearly in need we are of that sort of information. As I am contributing to its English section, I will now carry the title "Euro Fascist" awarded by one of the biggest jerks in all of the Internet with pride.

While I was writing this, one of the people at PI sent me an email with the link to an entry, reporting that Geller and Spencer have cancelled their participation in the Pro-Köln event. Egads! I wish Geller and Spencer (and a host of other American conservative Islam-critics) were able to read what the scummy rabble followers of Pro-Köln in PI's comment section, freedom-loving clear-cut democrats and defenders of Western values all of them, are saying about those two innocents and life in general.

But lucky for them, they can't. As it is, dream on!

Three Cheers to Charles Johnson

I have been made aware of the feud between Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs and other bloggers at Lawrence Auster's VFR, and find the interpretation offered there credible. Frankly, LGF never hold any attraction to me and I never returned after some brief looks in the very first years of this millennium. Too big, too chaotic, too little substance.

Now some clever pranksters produced a rip-off of "Downfall" (German: Der Untergang), an Oscar nominated 2004 German/Austrian film depicting the final twelve days of Adolf Hitler in his Berlin bunker. The rip-offers subtitled the original German soundtrack anachronistically, to show Hitler (Charles Johnson) erupting in frenzied, paranoid rage over his loss of ratings, spies he's going to ban: "conservatives, fascists, creationists, Christians", who are all laughing at him, so he is sure (and very probably right).



I, personally, find that a breath of fresh air. The film is so abysmally bad, I mean TECHNICALLY bad (I am coming to the frightful ideological underpinning later) whilst having received the highest acclaim, that ANY ridicule is welcome to take it down a peg. Bruno Ganz' Hitler is chewing the scenery (pun not intended) as if he had confused films and thought he'd be in Amityville Horror, while reviewers are enthusiastically drooling over this ridiculous, self-indulgent crap, Corinna Harfouch is pulling out all her artistic stops from A to B depicting Martha Goebbels, and Ulrich Matthes as her husband Josef comes across as a dour interpretation of Mephisto in a Faust-production somewhere in the deepest provincial backwaters, white facepaint and all. The rest is worse.

Director Oliver Hirschbiegel's (Yes, we laughed too when we first read that name and he looks the part as well!) assessment of the beloved Führer, whom the film's makers sought to give a "three-dimensional personality" (I first thought that had something to do with Bruno Ganz' chewing the scenery) says all one needs to know: "We know from all accounts that he [Hitler] was a very charming man — a man who managed to seduce a whole people into barbarism."

But of course. Roughly 40 million of one of the culturally and technologically most achieving people in the history of mankind were magically charmed into crimes of so far unknown proportions, so to say against their will, by an ugly, funny looking epileptic Austrian housepainter of doubtful parentage. And 70 years later they are still so besotted with him that even the grottiest of films depicting his last pathetic days gets the highest acclaim, assisted in blissful ignorance by the [edited] Americans who graced this botch with an Oscar-nomination, presumably because they thought there'd be Panzerlied in it.

We are currently experiencing history revision of so far unknown proportions. Whether it is "Downfall" that explains that the Germans were victims of and string-puppets for Hitler, whether "Valkyrie" (interesting discussion here) tries to bring across the message that an utterly peripheral and not entirely blameless group of dissident insurgents stood for "a better Germany" that never existed, whether "The Reader" humanizes (and sexualizes) a perpetrator, the conscious or subconscious goal is to relativize German history, aided by idiot Americans wo hate to hate the Germans who have given, after all, Panzerlied to the world. Talk about the "leftist liberal commie" Hollywood coterie!

So thanks to Charles Johnson, whose antics have at least pushed the most obnoxious of those sorry efforts off its piedestal.

The Convenient Guinea Pitbull

Somebody called Horst Mahler was sentenced to 4 years in prison for denial of the Holocaust lately and was detained immediately because of flight risk.

Who is Horst Mahler? Horst Mahler (72) is the man who co-founded the left-wing-extremist terrorist "Red Army Faction" in 1970. He had been charged before with accusations, for example, of Holocaust denial, for saying the 9/11 attacks were justified, and for giving the Nazi salute when he reported to prison.

Before that, in the Seventies, the leading RAF-member Mahler was convicted for terrorist activities, including several bank robberies, and for helping head terrorist Andreas Baader to escape from prison. He was sentenced to 14 years but was released in 1980 after several public statements condemning terrorism. Early in the new millennium, he became a member of the neo-Nazi NPD for a couple of years and acted as their lawyer. Anything to help a totalitarian cause.

Was justice thus done? It seems so, doesn't it? And isn't German society dealing fair- and justly with their historical burden? Decide for yourselves:

Only months before Mahler's conviction, a man who had almost stabbed a Jew to death (a Rabbi who was clearly identifiable as such) had been sentenced to 3 1/2 years in prison for aggravated battery and harrassment after a charge of attempted manslaughter had been dropped. He left the courtroom as a free man, applauded by a grinning entourage. He will serve the prison sentence only after proceedings finally underwent all instances and have thus become legally binding, if at all, depending on the outcome of his appeal.

The defendant's lawyers had stated that the fact that their client didn't stab the Rabbi a second time meant an "abandonment of an attempt to commit manslaughter" and that he was just an ebullient young man who was just too fond of "brandishing a knife". About the fact that he had delivered the blow together with a message, namely "I’ll kill you, you Scheiß-Jude", the perpetrator remained adamant, largely supported by the justice system and the maintream media, that there had been no antisemitic motive and that he had felt threatened by and physically inferior to the middle-aged, grossly obese rabbi. As the journalist Henryk M. Broder had put it then: "Here we have another case of self-defense, where the provocateur leaps aggressively into the provocatee's knife as an answer to a friendly "salam aleikum"", because, you may have guessed it, the perpetrator was not an ethnic German, but a culture-enriching German with Afghan parents and we can not acknowledge Muslim antisemitism because it would blow the entire beautiful concept of multiculturalism out of the water.

On a deeper level, we do not WANT to acknowledge it either, because then we'd lose the convenient guinea pig for tinkering with "tolerance", a guinea pig which might as conveniently turn at lightning speed into a Jew-killing pitbull because Germans love Jews when they are dead.

And that is why, in Germany, given the proper perpetrator line-up, you'll get largely away with cutting a life Jew open, but not with a denial of the Holocaust.