Dying to Establish Islam

Below is a video of Amir Abdel Malik of the Muslims Students Association leading his audience in the pledge of allegiance. The Islamic pledge of allegiance, that is — don’t expect anything about liberty and justice for all in this one — the text is straight out of the Muslim Brotherhood oath.

Many thanks to Vlad Tepes for YouTubing this video. Vlad explains: “I took this from the PJTV page only because the audio was so low there and it needed correcting. Please though, subscribe to, and support PJTV any way you can. These people along with CBN are the loudest and most courageous voices in the western world today.”

It’s Christmas Time for Asylum-Seekers

Although Christmas Island is just south of Indonesia, and is only 300 miles away from Jakarta as the crow flies, it is actually part of Australia. In recent years the island has become the preferred destination for immigrants from South Asia and Africa who want to gain entry into Australia and take advantage of the country’s generous asylum laws.

A favorite technique, particularly among Afghans, is to send an unaccompanied minor child on one of the boats to Christmas Island. The culture enrichers know that the law requires the expedited processing of underage refugees. Once the kid is in, he can contact the rest of his family, who will then be brought in under the “family reunification” rules. Everyone — Dad, Mum 1, Mum 2, eleventy children, Grandma, Grandpa — can then expect to be fed and housed at the expense of the Australian taxpayer.

Nice work if you can get it.

It’s no surprise that as soon as the laws were loosened, Christmas Island rapidly filled up with cultural enrichment. The detention camp is crowded, and accommodations there are primitive (by Australian standards, although perhaps not in comparison with Mogadishu), so the detainees have recently become restless and started to riot.

The night before last saw an escalation of the riots to include Molotov cocktails, arson, and general mayhem. When you watch the news videos at the bottom of this post, you’ll hear the announcer report that it was only a small portion of the detainees — 10%, or about 250 — who caused the trouble, with the rest of the asylum-seekers holding back from violence.

This is the Christmas Island version of the Tiny Minority of Extremists: we are required to acknowledge that the Vast Majority are Peaceful Moderates, and therefore we can do nothing about the situation except increase the local police budget and maybe put up a lot of razor-wire fencing — and even that might violate the human rights of the detainees.

Here’s a report from Yahoo:

Huge sections of Christmas Island’s main detention centre burnt to the ground last night as rioting asylum seekers hurled Molotov cocktails in a three-hour battle with police.

Police fired dozens of tear gas canisters at more than 100 rioters in a pitched battle during which a number of asylum seekers escaped.

Police retreated after fighting for an hour and fired teargas over the fence in an attempt to regain control of the sprawling centre.

At least nine fires were lit by several distinct groups who threw Molotov cocktails at the centre’s buildings.

A wheelie bin was set alight and pushed into an ablutions block and seven canvas tents were set ablaze. Flames shot 10m into the air.

Groups of asylum seekers ran through the camp chanting slogans [one wonders if these “slogans” involved something about God being greater — BB].

[…]

The renewed violence came as the full extent of a riot on Wednesday night became clear yesterday, with confirmation that a mob of 250 men threatened security guards with sticks and rocks and backed down only after police blasted canisters of tear gas at them.

Immigration officials struggled to explain how detainees have been able to make a mockery of security at the North West Point centre, which houses single men deemed too risky to keep in medium-security units.

Detainees broke through fences yesterday and walked in and out of the high-security compound as they pleased.

Below is some additional background from Nilk at Vlad Tepes:

Way, way off the north-west coast of Australia, closer to Indonesia than Oz, lies a little itty bitty speck called Christmas Island. It used to be considered Australian Territory on a par with the mainland until the “asylum seekers” and their enablers, the people smugglers and refugee activists, realised that if you got to Christmas Island and claimed asylum, you’d be afforded all the legal and other comforts you could ever want without having to get all the way over here.

So a detention centre was built there, to process claims, which was difficult because somehow, these “refugees” could make it to Indonesia from Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan and so on, and get onto a boat, yet still not have any papers that would identify them.

This detention centre wasn’t built to house more than around 600 or so people.

Under John Howard, aka the Evil Right Wing War Monger (the last conservative Prime Minister), regulations were toughened up and an exclusion zone was devised. So now you could get to Christmas Island, but you didn’t automatically get Legal Aid or instant acceptance. Also introduced were Temporary Protection Visas, which did not give you all of the rights and benefits of a full Refugee Visa.

When John Howard was voted out in 2007, Kevin Rudd of the Australian Labor Party became PM, and as a part of his platform, he promised to loosen up the harsh regime that Howard had instigated.

In 2008, he did so…

Bolta’s graph [see Vlad for the image] outlines how since the laws have been loosened, there has been an exponential increase in boats arriving carrying illegal immigrants (or asylum seekers if you prefer).

There are currently over 2000 of these people on Christmas Island (with several thousand more on the mainland in detention centres and four-star motels), from several different nationalities.

Below the jump are two Australian news videos about the events on Christmas Island:

Gates of Vienna News Feed 3/17/2011

The situation at the Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan is still dire, but has not worsened significantly since yesterday. Emergency workers have been dousing the pools containing spent fuel rods using helicopters and fire hoses, in an attempt to keep them cool enough until the new power line to the complex is completed. Smoke is rising from reactor #2, but officials are concentrating on reactor #3, whose condition they believe is more dangerous.

Meanwhile, the United Nations Security Council passed a resolution authorizing the establishment of a no-fly zone over Libya. The United States, Britain, and France voted for it, but China, India, and Russia abstained. There is no word about what mechanism will be set up to enforce the no-fly zone, or whether anyone besides the United States military will be assigned the task of enforcement.

In other news, anti-government demonstrations have broken out in Syria.

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

Thanks to AC, Anne-Kit, Blazing Cat Fur, C. Cantoni, Diana West, DS, Gaia, Insubria, JD, Takuan Seiyo, Zenster, and all the other tipsters who sent these in.

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

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

The Shadow Knows: Part Three

Survival Plus

The approaching cultural discontinuity will most likely be ushered in by a period of severe inflation.

This may occur suddenly and catastrophically, as speculators and investors divest themselves of the dollar and other major currencies and flee to precious metals, or it may be phased in slowly and deliberately by the central banks in order to solve the debt crisis using inflation as a “stealth tax”.

As mentioned in my previous post, the exact timing and course of these events cannot be known, because the situation is absolutely without historical precedent, and there are too many variables involved. The coming collapse of the global financial system will be chaotic in the mathematical sense of the term — like a crashing ocean wave, it can only be predicted in a general sense, and not in any detail.

We may be facing a total breakdown of society, with burning cities, roving marauders, starvation, epidemics, and all the other elements described in various doomsday scenarios. Or we may experience a more general slide into disorder, poverty, and the social conditions of a Third-World backwater.

It’s important to keep the worst-case scenario in mind, so the survivalist preparations recommended by many of our commenters are assuredly the most prudent course. However, survivalist tactics and techniques are not the focus of this series of essays.

In the comments on last night’s installment, Peter had this to say about my intention not to concentrate on survivalism.

I would ask that you not dismiss survivalism, which the above quote would seem to suggest. Any community that perseveres, or is founded during the collapse will have at its core survivalists. They’re a necessary ingredient, and integrating them into the emerging new reality is vital.

I couldn’t agree more. I am not dismissing survivalism in the slightest. If the worst predictions come to pass, the contributions of the survivalists will be absolutely crucial to the preservation of the most important parts of our civilization.

However, the reason why I don’t focus on survivalism is that it is covered so thoroughly elsewhere, by writers who are much more knowledgeable about the topic than I am. If someone wants to send me a comprehensive list of survivalist websites, I will gladly post it, because the people who create and maintain such sites are stalwart and selfless patriots, and their information is invaluable.

But there’s no point in my reinventing that particular wheel. My goal is somewhat different: I want to bring to awareness a process that is already underway, but may not have been examined yet in a systematic fashion.

If the survivalists’ scenario should come about — God forbid — then much of the customary apparatus of civilization, built up so patiently and painstakingly over the last four or five centuries, will be dismantled. Thinking about sheer survival is obviously a necessity, but when the survivors emerge and confront the reality of the aftermath — what then?

Pierre Legrand had the right idea:

One of the first things we all need to do is reach out to our neighbors and develop ties. Nothing is as valuable as friends.

What he says is quite true. And this is what the Shadow is all about.

Consider a couple of imaginary scenarios for the morning after the Big Collapse. You’re an expert survivalist, and your preparations have enabled you to survive the initial violence and chaos. You emerge from your shelter, gun in hand, and survey the columns of black smoke in the ravaged landscape around you.

Then you see another armed survivalist emerge from his own shelter. He eyes you with suspicion, and points his gun at you. You manage to shoot him dead, and repeat the process with a number of other survivors until you’re standing in a field of corpses.

What then?

A more likely scenario would run like this:

Watch Out for Urban Legends

A few weeks ago a particularly gory photograph was being sent around by email and presumably posted on various websites. It purported to show a Christian woman in (I think) Iraq who had had her heart ripped from her chest and a cross shoved down her throat by Muslim fanatics.

The photo was sent to us two or three times, and I hastily deleted it from our webmail to try to keep Dymphna from opening it. She has PTSD, and can be triggered by seeing gruesome images and reading tales of slaughter and horrific suffering.

I declined to post the photo for the same reason, and also because it was totally undocumented. Lurid images and tales that get passed around by email are more often than not urban legends of one sort or another. Remember the Palestinian “child brides”? That video is still being passed around with the inaccurate explanation attached.

As it turns out, in this case I was right to be suspicious, if what our commenter Benny D. says is correct:

Gates of Vienna News Feed 3/16/2011

The Japanese are pursuing a three-pronged strategy to try to contain the nuclear crisis at the Fukushima plant and keep radiation levels from getting any higher. Helicopters are hauling enormous buckets of seawater and dumping them on the most dangerously exposed fuel rods. A new road is being bulldozed in so that water cannons may be brought up and used to shoot water into the pools containing the fuel roads. And a new power line is being rapidly constructed so the electricity can be restored to the existing coolant-pumping system.

In other news, police fired upon Shi’ite demonstrators in Bahrain, killing five of them. Police also reportedly attacked a hospital to prevent it from treating the wounded demonstrators, even going so far as to slash the tires of ambulances to prevent them from carrying the victims in for treatment. Bahrain has now outlawed all public gatherings. The crisis has spread to Oman as well, with renewed demonstrations there.

Meanwhile, supported by air cover, forces loyal to Col. Moamar Qadhafi are advancing towards the last major stronghold of the rebels in Benghazi.

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

Thanks to AC, C. Cantoni, DL, Gaia, Insubria, JD, JP, Mary Abdelmassih, Zenster, and all the other tipsters who sent these in.

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

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

The Shadow Knows: Part Two

Additional Economic Background

After last night’s introductory post, I had originally planned to launch straight into a more detailed analysis of one of the seven shadow functions. However, based on some of the comments that appeared on the post, further background material is necessary to help explain the main thrust of this topic.

Two general areas of explanation need to be covered. One is easy, and I’ll tackle that first: a reader named “TequilaKid” left a comment (and a challenge) for me. He posted it on the news feed by mistake, and many readers may not have seen it, so here it is in its entirety:

Dear Baron Bodissey:

I read your note in Gates of Vienna today and was inordinately puzzled by two broad historical claims you formulated:

1.		“The Western welfare state is built out of enormous, unthinkable quantities of debt. It is the greatest Ponzi scheme in history, and its demise is mathematically inevitable.”
2.		“… Socialism … weakened Western culture and allowed Islam to establish … a massive beachhead.”

I scoured my head for hours trying to guess what historical events had persuaded you of the accuracy of these peculiar notions. I strongly suspect they are random products of your imagination. I hereby challenge you to produce any sensible argument or fact in defense of these two remarkable theses, which I have no hesitation in qualifying even now as patently fraudulent.

Sincerely, TequilaKid

Since #2 is a considered evaluation, and therefore constitutes my personal opinion, I can no more prove it than I can “prove” a statement such as: “This country is going to hell in a handbasket.” (Which it is; I just can’t prove it.)

#1 is more susceptible to demonstration, since it depends on data which are readily available, although the material is quite complex. The current welfare state is the greatest Ponzi scheme in history, and its demise is mathematically inevitable within about a generation, at the outside.

Let’s review the definition of a Ponzi scheme. Bernie Madoff’s scam was an enormous Ponzi scheme, but a simpler and smaller model can be found in the standard chain letter. A recipient is asked to add his name to the bottom of a list of names and send an amount of money to the name at the top of the list, which he is instructed to cross off. He is then required to forward a copy of the new list and its instructions to ten more people. After that he sits back to wait for the money to flow in.

The earliest participants in a chain letter really can make a lot of money off the scheme, but as the number of recipients rises exponentially, the pool of potential new suckers rapidly dwindles. Those who are late to the game lose their money as they help enrich the earlier players.

A mathematical formula of moderate complexity — which includes parameters for the total population available, the estimated proportion of recipients who are willing to participate, and the average time it takes to receive and resend each letter — provides a rough guess as to when any given chain letter or other Ponzi scheme will collapse. But the math is not really necessary — common sense and a reasonable native intelligence leads to the intuitive conclusion that any Ponzi scheme must eventually crash. No population is infinite, so the supply of suckers must run out, and the last ones in are the big-time losers.

Bear all that in mind as you examine the graph below:


These figures only take us up to 2009, and we have added two or three trillion dollars to the national debt since then. The last figure I heard was that the debt currently stands at about fourteen trillion dollars — a sum that is scarcely imaginable to an ordinary schmoe like me.

The graph bears a remarkable resemblance to the progression of a typical Ponzi scheme, but instead of an ever-increasing pool of money being sent out by the suckers, it shows the ever-increasing amount of money borrowed by the United States government so that it can continue to give out all the free goodies that its citizens and corporate friends have come to expect.

In other words, instead of voluntary suckers — rubes who, although stupid, surrender their money of their own free will — the feds are forcibly extracting money from future taxpayers. When the scheme collapses, as it inevitably must, the citizens of that era will be de-pocketed of their money, and will receive little or nothing in return.

Congress is even now rearranging the deck chairs on its own fiscal Titanic, tinkering with the trivial edges of the gargantuan deficits that its serial profligacy has created. Defund NPR. A pay freeze for federal employees. Cut back on military expenditures.

Those are all eminently worthy goals, but they don’t touch the elephant in the room, which consists of three major entitlements: Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.

Consider this graph:


The above estimates don’t include all the effects of Obamacare, which is expected to increase Medicare costs significantly (even while reducing delivered benefits). I don’t know the full methodology behind the figures, but I presume they also don’t factor in fully the persistent stagflation which is now expected over the next few years. That will tend to erode the tax base, and will require even further tax increases.

Or the government can borrow even more money — assuming it can still find governments that are foolish enough to lend it to us.

Finally, take a look at this graph:

Shazam!

Another day, another joke.

Regular reader and commenter Cheradenine Zakalwe translated this one from the French, and explains its origins:

Josaine Plateret, a candidate for Sarkozy’s ruling UMP party in France, has just been suspended from the party for posting “racist” jokes on her Facebook page, among which is this gem.

When you get to the punch line, you’ll probably say, “Wait a minute, Baron! This isn’t a joke — it’s just a somewhat fanciful depiction of the reality of 21st-century Europe!”

And indeed it is. But if we can’t laugh at all the absurdity around us, what is there left?

One day, by chance, an Arab comes across an angel. The angel invites him to make four wishes and promises to grant them immediately.

The Arab thinks for a while then says, “I wish I had blue eyes”.

Shazam! He has blue eyes!

The angel asks for his second wish. The Arab thinks for a moment then says, “I wish I had blonde hair”.

Shazam! The Arab has blonde hair.

The angel invites him to make his third wish. The Arab replies, “I wish I was a Swede and had a Swedish passport!”

Shazam! He is now a Swede with a Swedish passport!

The angel asks for his fourth and last wish. The Arab thinks carefully then replies…

Commemorating the Greek Genocide

We’ve heard a lot lately about the “genocide” at Srebrenica in Bosnia, thanks to the recent decision by the Canadian Government to ban Srdja Trifkovic from Canada.

There’s another genocide — a real one — that the Islamic world and most Western governments don’t want to talk about: the genocide against Christians conducted by the Turks during and after the First World War. There were actually three overlapping genocides involved — against the Armenian minority in Turkey, against the Assyrians in what is now mostly Iraq, and against the Greeks in Thrace and Asia Minor.

We just received this press release from the Hellenic League of America about an upcoming commemoration of these genocides, which will be held next month in New York:

Media Alert: 3rd Annual Greek Genocide Commemoration
For Immediate Release: March 16, 2011
Contact: Ioannis Fidanakis (973)-464-0211

Please join us, on April 6, 2011 at 12 noon, as we pay tribute to the victims of the Greek, Armenian and Assyrian Genocides outside the United Nations in Ralph Bunche Park in New York. This year’s commemoration is organized and hosted by Panthracian Union of America ‘Orpheus’ and supported by the Hellenic League of America, HLA, and will feature such guest speakers as two time New York Times bestselling Author and Director of Jihad Watch.org, Robert Spencer; Editor and Publisher of Atlas Shrugs and Executive Director of Freedom Defense Initiative and Stop Islamization of America, Pamela Geller; First Vice-President of the International Association of Genocide Scholars, Professor Alex Hinton; President of the Federation of Hellenic Societies of Greater New York, Elias Tsekerides and President of the PanPontian Federation of USA and Canada, Dimitris Molohides.

Ralph Bunche Park is located on the northwest corner of 1st Ave and 42nd Street. For more information please contact former Panthracian President and HLA Spokesman Ioannis Fidanakis.

RSVP on Facebook

Panthracian Union of America ‘Orpheus’
P.O. Box 3280 Steinway Station
Long Island City, NY 11103
Web Site

Hellenic League of America, HLA


Panthracian Union of America ‘Orpheus’ Inc., is a not-for-profit Philanthropic and Cultural Organization serving the Thracian American community since 1983.

Gates of Vienna News Feed 3/15/2011

The situation at the Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan is still alarming, but has not noticeably worsened in the last 24 hours. There are reports of a new fire at reactor #4. After yesterday’s precipitous slide, the Japanese stock market rebounded today (Wednesday). However, markets in Europe and the United States took serious losses as a result of the crisis in Japan.

After what happened at Fukushima, various Western European countries are reconsidering their dependence on nuclear power. The same is true in the United States, especially as it concerns old reactors that use the same GE design as the devastated reactors in Japan.

In other news, Bahrain has declared a three-month state of emergency as the Shi’ite protests continue. Saudi troops, which have arrived in Bahrain, may be used to help quell the disturbances.

Meanwhile, more boatloads of Tunisian refugees have arrived at the Italian island of Lampedusa, adding more than 1,600 immigrants and bringing the total arrivals since January to more than 10,000. Marine Le Pen, the leader of the National Front in France, says the only solution is for the Italian navy to turn back the refugee boats before they land.

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

Thanks to AC, C. Cantoni, CSP, Freedom Fighter, Gaia, Insubria, JD, JP, KGS, Mary Abdelmassih, Zenster, and all the other tipsters who sent these in.

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

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

The Shadow Knows: Part One

The Discontinuity

There’s an elephant in the room, but I rarely write about it.

The primary issues that we cover at Gates of Vienna are Islam, sharia, and the Islamization of the West. In addition we sometimes branch off into closely related topics, such as political correctness, multiculturalism, Socialism, and all the other debilitating ideologies that have weakened Western Culture and allowed Islam to establish such a massive beachhead.

Dymphna and I occasionally range even further into topics that are tangential at best, including the culture wars, social and political history, American party politics, and any number of other topics.

But I hardly ever discuss the elephant. I don’t even like to reach out and tug at his tail or touch his trunk, because he’s so damned big and overpowering. He’s much more significant than anything else I can see, but before long he will flatten our puny little bamboo village, and there’s no way to stop him. Any lengthy discussion of the looming pachyderm seems pointless.

I refer, of course, to the elephant of the coming economic collapse.

I make no predictions about when its enormous legs will begin to cut their inexorable swathe of destruction. I read all the doomsday forecasts back in 2008, and they all turned out to be wrong, at least in their predicted time frame. The signs that were predicted back then — the rise of oil and food prices, continuing unemployment, the stagnation in GDP, and the flight to precious metals — have begun, but they are clocking in two years later than predicted.

So the global financial system seems to be a lot more resilient than most people thought. The Powers That Be are adept at jury-rigging, and have patched up the decrepit machine with bailing wire and duct tape — i.e. bailouts and quantitative easing — to help keep it running for a little while longer.

However, the entire structure must eventually come crashing down, and the longer the postponement, the more spectacular will be its fall. The Western welfare state is built out of enormous, unthinkable quantities of debt. It is the greatest Ponzi scheme in history, and its demise is mathematically inevitable. The only question is exactly when the scam starts to unravel in earnest — the outside limit is about a generation from now, when the demographic disaster can no longer be papered over.

Fjordman believes, as do many others, that the party will be over much sooner than that. I tend to agree, but I’m no expert, and I’ve seen a lot of experts fail in their predictions. So I present no timelines, but the end of the world’s current financial regime is coming soon, and there isn’t anything that can be done to prevent it.

*   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *
El Inglés has referred to a “discontinuity” in the affairs of the West which will change the rules about how we may discuss and deal with the looming crisis. It seems evident now that the discontinuity will take the form of an economic collapse, and the concomitant failure of the welfare state.

The end of the welfare state will act as a high colonic for some of the worst excesses of our culture. The lavish funding of our most absurd and destructive behaviors will come to an end. State support for the able-bodied, and probably even for the aged and disabled, will be drastically curtailed.

Immigration and its attendant problems will in due course become insignificant, because what remains of civil society among the natives will hunker down to protect itself, by whatever means necessary. Yes, I realize that much of California and other parts of the Southwest are already alien territory, and will simply become part of Aztlan or whatever the mestizo majority decides to call it. But at least the new entity will no longer be kept on life support through the beneficence of politicians in Washington D.C.

And much of the Muslim problem in Europe will be solved. When the state is no longer supporting three-quarters of the urban immigrant population, the denizens of the no-go zones will have to figure out some other means of subsistence. One presumes the resolution of the ensuing struggle for resources will not be pretty, but the problem will be resolved.

But what about the rest of civil society?

Forget about the immigrants, the underclass, the drug addicts, and the aged and infirm. What about the rest of us?

Speaking Out Against the Persecution of Christians

Update: It appears that Lukas Saliba is repeating an urban legend (inadvertently or otherwise) when he displays and describes the photo of an “Aramaean woman” who was raped and murdered grotesquely. The image appears to be a publicity still from a gory movie, and does not represent a real event.

See this post for more details.


The following video is part of a speech given by an Aramaean Christian named Lukas Saliba during a demonstration in Frankfurt last Saturday against the Muslim persecution of Christians.

According to Politically Incorrect, Lukas Saliba is originally from Syria, and is the Chairman of the Union of Aramaic Youth (JAU). He and his fellows have been called “Nazis” and “racists” by the hard-left “anti-fascists” in Germany.

Many thanks to Kitman for translating and subtitling this clip. The video is embedded below the jump, followed by a transcript:

Contraband Weapons for Hamas

The Israel Defense Forces seized a ship today bearing a cargo of Iranian weapons bound for Gaza. According to one report, the haul included at least four surface-to-sea missiles with a range of 35 kilometers (21.7 miles) and a radar system capable of recognizing ships before they can launch.

The Jerusalem Post gives some of the details:

IDF Seizes Freighter of Iranian Weapons Headed to Gaza

The IDF seized a freighter ship with dozens of tons of weaponry from Iran headed for Hamas in the Gaza Strip on Tuesday.

The ship, known as Victoria, was flying a Liberian flag, and was seized by the navy in the Mediterranean Sea, 200 miles off of Israel’s coast.

The Victoria was boarded by commandos from the Israeli Navy’s Flotilla 13, also known as the Shayetet, arrived in the Ashdod port on Tuesday evening.

An initial inspection of the cargo revealed the ship was carrying weapons. The exact amount is to be determined.

The crew, questioned by the Navy Commando, was not aware that the cargo contained weaponry.

The ship set sail Monday night from the port of Lattakai in Syria and from there it traveled to Turkey. There, it was supposed to unload the weapons, which would travel by land to Gaza. The IDF’s assessment is that the weapons did not originate in Turkey, but that the containers were unloaded there and transferred onto the Victoria.

The port of Lattakai is the same port where two Iranian war ships docked in February on their way to the Suez Canal. At the time, IDF officials raised concerns of the possibility that they were carrying weapons intended for terrorists organizations, but there was no confirmation.

“The operation was approved as necessary in accordance with government directives in light of Chief of the General Staff Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz’s recommendations,” an IDF statement read.

Gantz updated Defense Minister Ehud Barak about the findings on-board the vessel earlier in the morning.

Notice that the cargo was carried on a German-owned ship operated by a French shipping company:

Gates of Vienna News Feed 3/14/2011

To take your mind off the nuclear crisis in Japan, consider the case of a German woman named Monika Strub. Ms. Strub was a man until she underwent a sex change, and in her former gender she was a neo-Nazi, a member of the NPD. Now she’s a leftist, and says she is a true socialist. From National Socialism and manliness to International Socialism and femininity — is there a connection?

In other news, Bahrain has asked Saudi Arabia — under the fig leaf of the Gulf Cooperation Council — to send troops across the causeway to Manama to help Bahrain’s (Sunni) Royal Family contain the violent protests that have broken out among the country’s Shia majority.

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

Thanks to AC, C. Cantoni, Caroline Glick, Fjordman, Insubria, JD, Zenster, and all the other tipsters who sent these in.

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

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