Category Archives: Europe

Record levels of unemployment for Europe’s youth

Stefan Steinberg writes:

According to the latest figures from the German Statistical Office and Eurostat, youth unemployment across Europe has increased by a staggering 25 percent in the course of the past two and a half years. The current levels of youth unemployment are the highest in Europe since the regular collection of statistics began.

In the spring of 2008, prior to the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the financial crash of that year, the official unemployment rate for youth in Europe averaged 15 percent. The latest figures from the German Statistical Office reveal that this figure has now risen to over 20 percent.

In total, 20.5 percent of young people between 15 and 24 are seeking work in the 27 states of the European Union. At the same time, these numbers conceal large differences in unemployment levels for individual European nations.

In Spain, where the social-democratc government led by Jose Luis Zapatero has introduced a series of punitive austerity programmes at the behest of the banks and the IMF, youth unemployment has doubled since 2008 and now stands at 46 percent. In second place in the European rankings is Greece, the first country to be bailed out by the European Union and to install austerity measures, with a rate of 40 percent. In third place is Italy (28 percent), followed by Portugal and Ireland (27 percent) and France (23 percent).

In Britain, where youth have taken to the streets in a wave of riots and protests in a number of the country’s main cities, unemployment hovers around 20 percent. A recent report from Britain’s Office of National Statistics reported that joblessness among people between the ages of 16 and 24 has been rising steadily, from 14.0 percent in the first quarter of 2008 to 20 percent in the first quarter of 2011—an enormous 40 percent spike in just three years.

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Italy edges closer to ‘burqa ban’ law

Al Jazeera reports:

An Italian parliamentary commission has approved a draft law that would ban women from wearing veils that cover their faces in public, if passed by parliament in September.

The draft approved by the constitutional affairs commission on Tuesday would prohibit women from wearing a burqa, niqab or any other garb that covers the face in such circumstances.

It would expand a decades-old law that for security reasons prohibits people from wearing face-covering items such as masks in public places.

Women who violate the ban would face fines of $140 to $400, while third parties who force women to cover their faces in public would be fined $42,000 and face up to 12 months in jail.

Italy, an overwhelmingly Catholic country with a small Muslim minority, is the latest European country to act against the burqa. France and Belgium have banned the wearing of burqa-style Islamic dress in public, as has a city in Spain. The Belgium law cited security concerns.

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Europeans against multiculturalism

At Boston Review, John R. Bowen writes:

One of the many signs of the rightward creep of Western European politics is the recent unison of voices denouncing multiculturalism. German Chancellor Angela Merkel led off last October by claiming that multiculturalism “has failed and failed utterly.” She was echoed in February by French President Nicolas Sarkozy and British Prime Minister David Cameron. All three were late to the game, though: for years, the Dutch far right has been bashing supposedly multicultural policies.

Despite the shared rhetoric, it is difficult to discern a common target for these criticisms. Cameron aimed at an overly tolerant attitude toward extremist Islam, Merkel at the slow pace of Turkish integration, and Sarkozy at Muslims who pray in the street.

But while it is hard to know what exactly the politicians of Europe mean when they talk about multiculturalism, one thing we do know is that the issues they raise—real or imagined—have complex historical roots that have little to do with ideologies of cultural difference. Blaming multiculturalism may be politically useful because of its populist appeal, but it is also politically dangerous because it attacks “an enemy within”: Islam and Muslims. Moreover, it misreads history. An intellectual corrective may help to diminish its malign impact.

Political criticisms of multiculturalism confuse three objects. One is the changing cultural and religious landscape of Europe. Postwar France and Britain encouraged immigration of willing workers from former colonies; Germany drew on its longstanding ties with Turkey for the same purpose; somewhat later, new African and Asian immigrants, many of them Muslims, traveled throughout Western Europe to seek jobs or political refuge. As a result, one sees mosques where there once were only churches and hears Arabic and Turkish where once there were only dialects of German, Dutch, or Italian. The first object then is the social fact of cultural and religious diversity, of multicultural and multi-religious everyday life: the emergence in Western Europe of the kind of social diversity that has long been a matter of pride in the United States.

The second object—suggested by Cameron’s phrase “state multiculturalism”—concerns the policies each of these countries have used to handle new residents. By the 1970s, Western European governments realized that the new workers and their families were there to stay, so the host countries tried out a number of strategies to integrate the immigrants into the host society. Policymakers all realized that they would need to find what later came to be called “reasonable accommodations” with the needs of the new communities: for mosques and schools, job training, instruction in the host-country language. These were pragmatic efforts; they did not aim at assimilation, nor did they aim to preserve spatial or cultural separation. Some of these policies eventually were termed “multicultural” because they involved recognizing ethnic community structures or allowing the use of Arabic or Turkish in schools. But these measures were all designed to encourage integration: to bring new groups in while acknowledging the obvious facts of linguistic, social, cultural, and religious difference.

The third object that multiculturalism’s critics confuse is a set of normative theories of multiculturalism, each of which attempts to mark out a way to take account of cultural and religious diversity from a particular philosophical point of view. Although ideas of multiculturalism do shape public debates in Britain (as they do in North America), they do so much less in continental Europe, and even in Britain it would be difficult to find direct policy effects of these normative theories.

Politicians err when they claim that normative ideas of multiculturalism shape the social fact of cultural and religious diversity: such diversity would be present with or without a theory to cope with it. Nor are state policies shaped by those ideas, which tend to be recent in origin. Quite to the contrary, each European country has followed well-traveled pathways for dealing with diversity. Methods designed to accommodate sub-national religious blocs are now being adapted and applied to Muslim immigrants. Far from newfangled, misguided policies of multiculturalism, these distinct strategies represent the continuation of long-standing, nation-specific ways of recognizing and managing diversity.

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The Anders Behring Breivik interview

Anders Behring Breivik’s attorney, Geir Lippestad, says his client appears to be insane. Whether this is what Lippestad actually believes or whether he is simply laying the groundwork for an insanity defense, is unclear. But the idea that only a madman could do what Breivik did, is an idea with dangerous and popular appeal.

We would all like to believe that normal people are incapable of doing dreadful things. We want to imagine that Breivik is one of a kind.

Those who share Breivik’s antipathy for Islam, who promote the idea that the West is being taken over by Muslims and who warn that Europe and America are in jeopardy of coming under the rule of Sharia law, are now trying to protect their investment in this pernicious ideology by joining in the chorus that Breivik is a psychopath.

“The manifesto of the perpetrator makes clear that this is a madman,” writes Geert Wilders.

Pamela Geller follows the same tack:

Conservative blogger and anti-jihadist Pamela Geller told The Daily Caller it’s “outrageous” that she’s been “assign[ed] blame” for Oslo shooter Anders Behring Breivik’s actions.

“It’s like equating Charles Manson, who heard in the lyrics of Helter Skelter a calling for the Manson murders,” Geller said in an exclusive phone interview. “It’s like blaming the Beatles. It’s patently ridiculous.”

Robert Spencer at Jihad Watch refers to Breivik as the “mad murderer in Norway.”

In each instance, the reason the anti-Jihadists want to characterize Breivik as insane is rather transparent: they want to create the widest possible distance between Breivik and their ideology.

The truth is way too uncomfortable — that Breivik, Wilders, Geller, and Spencer all view the world through the same ideological prism; they merely have a tactical disagreement about the best way of promoting their views.

When Wilders asserts that Breivik’s writings make it clear he’s a madman, Wilders is relying on the fact that most people won’t read Breivik. If they do they will quickly discover how closely aligned he is with his anti-Jihadist detractors.

In his compendium, 2083 A European Declaration of Independence, Breivik interviews himself. There we learn that his extremism is mixed with a large measure of political pragmatism.

Even if neo-Nazis and cultural conservatives (like him) share common ground he sees no chance that they can form an alliance. “It will be extremely hard to cooperate with anyone who views our primary ally (the Jews/Israel) as their primary enemy.”

He sees himself as part of “a relatively cynical/cruel/goal oriented armed resistance group” that nevertheless has “foundational principles” that would appeal to the majority of Europeans.

There are plenty of views expressed here that most people will find offensive, and though the fears that Breivik shares with other anti-Jihadists might be irrational or overblown, there is little evidence he is mad.

Q: Is it possible that cultural conservatives and National Socialists will
cooperate in the future?

A: It will be extremely hard to cooperate with anyone who views our primary ally (the
Jews/Israel) as their primary enemy. Their Jew obsession and support to Islamic regimes
will severely hinder any direct cooperation. They are blinded by their Jew hate to a
degree where they fail to see the imminent threat to Europe represented by Islam.
The following poll was taken from eNationalist, a rather hardcore NS site:

eNat Poll[4]: Can the Arab world and part of the Islamic world be our allies?
Yes: 44%
No: 52%

This poll indirectly illustrate that the hardcore NS community reject the concept of
European Christian solidarity and thus rejecting the support to our Eastern Christian
cousins (Greek, Maronite, Assyrian, Copt) with the long term goal of creating future
Christian (Islamic free) zones. It also shows that they are generally supportive of
alliances with Islamic countries.

It wasn’t exactly a secret that many in the NS movements rejected Christendom
completely and instead support Odinism. It is however understandable that they view
modern humanist Christendom as weak and therefore unworthy of support (a view which
I partly agree with). However, the solution is not to reject Christianity but rather to
reform Christianity to re-introduce the concepts of “self-defence” as propagated by
former Crusader Popes. Also, we shouldn’t forget that Nazi Germany allied itself with the
Ottoman Caliphate/Turkey on two occasions and supported the Christian Armenian
genocides.

Many NS support the Islamic conspiracy theory that Jews organised the 9/11 attacks and
both reject that the Holocaust took place. In light of these opposing views it’s hard to
imagine that the “new Western European right” will be willing to trust National Socialists.

One of the reasons why hardcore anti-Semites (David Duke would be a case in point) are
unreliable allies is that they hate Jews so much that it shuts down the rational parts of their brain and they end up making common cause with Muslims, based on mutual hatred.
Fjordman

However, we have certain things in common that shouldn’t be underestimated.
We share the same anti -EU, -UN and –immigration/multiculturalism (Muslim immigration
at least) sentiments and the goal of “preserving European traditions, culture etc” which is
the primary reason why more and more ex-NS people are conforming and joining the
new “European right”.

As a message to those hardcore NS’s who are simply unable to compromise; Conform
and join our armed struggle against the European cultural Marxists/multiculturalists (the
enablers of the Islamisation of Europe), or continue to be sidelined and marginalised.
Multiculturalism is the hole in the dike. Islam is the water pouring in. Everything else
should be irrelevant. Your “Jew” obsession is undermining your own struggle against
multiculturalism.

The cultural conservatives of Western Europe will seize power by 2080, if you want to be
a part of this you will have no choice but to compromise. I would imagine that a
continued Judeo Christian Europe would be considerably better than a European
Caliphate even for the most hardcore NS.

Q: Some “Ghandist/pacifist” members of the conservative resistance will claim
that violence will not solve anything and will instead only give our enemies
more rhetorical ammunition and make it easier for them to gain the moral
ground. They will finally be able to say; “terrorism has no religion”. “By using
terror you are undermining your own struggle and hurting the nationalist
cause”.

How would you react to statements like this?

A: Well, first of all, I would tell him he obviously didn’t have a clue what he was talking
about. Pacifist approaches have been tried in the past; in Lebanon where the Christians
waited until the Muslims made up 60% of the population. The Copts in Egypt have been
relatively pacifist and look what it got them… They are almost extinct due to their
pacifist stance. The same can be said about the Christian Assyrians and Armenians. They
waited and waited, like loyal little dhimmis and “hoped” for a better future, until the day
the Muslims decided to massacre them. Ghandi pacifism worked against the Brits in India
because Christian Europeans aren’t primitive barbarians… However, pacifism doesn’t
work at all against an Islamic entity. As soon as they become a form a majority (and this
will happen unless we can start the deportation campaigns in time) they will strike and
eventually massacre us as history has shown again and again.

A great majority of the European conservatives have chosen dialogue and pacifism since
1955 until today. And what exactly has it gotten us…? During the last 55 years of pacifist
dialogue, the multiculturalists have been allowed to open the gates and flooded our
ancestral lands with 30 million Muslims and they even continue to do so today. Should
we perhaps try dialogue for another 40 years and see what that brings us…? Only a
suicidal individual would accept this. Not acting would be the biggest of all crimes.
The time for dialogue is over for an increasing number of Western Europeans. The
European civil war will progress the coming decades and our traitor enemies will
eventually be defeated and executed.

Your personal life and convictions
Q: How did you first get involved in your current activities?

A: Well, I gained awareness of certain issues at that time. My best friend for many years,
a Muslim, had lived his whole life in Oslo West with limited contact with the Norwegian-
Pakistani community. Yet, he and more or less 100% of youngsters like him still failed in
many ways to be integrated. He attended Urdu classes at school from early childhood. He
went to the mosque occasionally after he was 12. Like most Norwegian-Pakistanis he felt
really torn between the Norwegian community and the Pakistani community. However, I
was wrong when assuming that he would chose to follow my path and the Norwegian
way. I understood early that he resented Norwegians and the Norwegian society. Not
because he was jealous, after all he could have conformed if he wanted to. He resented it
because it represented the exact opposite of Islamic ways. Shortly after we broke of
contact he left Jon Trygve and Richard and started hanging out with his cousin and other
Pakistanis. Since then he has been a part of the Pakistani community in Oslo and has, as
far as I know, minimal contact with the Norwegian community. Since then he and his
Muslim friends have beaten and harassed several ethnic Norwegians, one of them being
my friend, Kristoffer.

According to Kristoffer, Arsalan and a bunch of Pakistanis tried to rob him (See: Jizya).
When he refused to pay them, they beat him badly. Luckily, there were witnesses around
and this incident in addition to Arsalans other acts of violence against ethnic Norwegians
resulted in him being incarcerated for 6 months. Another incident, which was confirmed
from reliable sources, happened on New Year’s Eve in Frognerparken, Oslo. Arsalan and
his Pakistani friends allegedly gang raped an ethnic Norwegian girl. I believe this was in
95 or 96. As far as I know, they were never charged with this crime due to the lack of
witnesses.

Muslim girls were off limits to everyone, even the Muslim boys. The only available
“commodity” at this point was therefore ethnic Norwegian girls, referred to as “whores”.
Due to the tolerance indoctrinated through Norwegian upbringing – girls aren’t brought
up to be sceptics, racists or anti-immigrant, just like most boys. They are all brought up
to be very tolerant. As a result, many ethnic Norwegian girls, especially in Muslim
dominated areas, despise ethnic Norwegian boys because they consider them as weak
and inferior with lack of pride, seeing as they are systematically “subdued” by the
“superior Muslim boys”. Ironically, Muslim boys are raised to view Norwegian girls as
inferior “whores”. Their only purpose is to bring pleasure until the Muslim guys are
around 20-25 when they will find a pure, “superior” Muslim girl, a virgin. At this point,
the ethnic Norwegian “whores” is discarded, and most of the girls go back to their old
“tribe”. They are welcomed back in the name of tolerance.

More or less all Muslim parents will tell their sons the following: “You can have fun with
the Norwegian whores, as long as you marry a Muslim”. If, against all odds, a Muslim guy
wants to marry one of these “whores”, she has to convert to Islam – no exception. The
Muslim girls however are guarded by their male family members like they were made of
pure gold. If a Muslim girl, against all odds, engages in a relationship with an ethnic
Norwegian guy, then the Muslim males from her family or “tribe” will kill her or forcefully
take her to their country of origin to be “educated” for a few years. They will attempt to
lure her on a vacation to Pakistan, Morocco, Somalia etc. and possibly kill her there, if
she still refuses to conform. An alternative strategy is to forcefully marry her off to a local
Muslim guy and keep her in their country of origin until she is sufficiently “tied down”
through impregnating her and systematical indoctrination. When she is “tied down” with
2 or more children there isn’t much she can do. Also, it’s not very risky to kill Muslim girls
in Muslim countries as most government officials are corrupt and “very understanding”,
especially in cases where a family wants to “restore their pride”. This is the main reason
why Muslim girls are occasionally sent back to their country of origin, in order to prevent
them from becoming too “European”. They are often sent back to Europe, after several
years of abduction and indoctrination when they are sufficiently subdued and under
control of the Muslim society. It’s not very tempting for Muslim girls to file a divorce and
risk getting frozen out of the Muslim community or risk getting killed when they have 2-4
children.

I also remember from my earlier childhood, two Pakistani and one Turkish girl from
Smestad school, the primary school I attended; Baligha, Modazzer and Eilif. Baligha was
Faizals, my friend’s, sister, I didn’t know Modazzer although she was my neighbour, but I
used to play with Eilif, Onors sister. At that time there were three Pakistani families in
that area and one Turkish, all except the latter lived in publicly subsidised apartments, in
accordance with the government’s integration program. I remember the day when
Modazzers chair was empty. We didn’t get an answer from our teacher regarding her
whereabouts. She was supposed to have returned from her summer vacation in Pakistan.
The next year Eilif was sent to Turkey. I heard her father thought she had become “too
Norwegian”. A few years later, the exact same thing happened with Baligha. One day she
didn’t show up for school after her vacation in Pakistan. I was only 10 years old at that
time and didn’t really know what was going on. In retrospect I know that they were sent
back to their country of origin, and no one as far as I know has heard from them again.
They were most likely either married away at young age or killed. I know exactly where
those families live(d) and I know for a fact that they vanished and didn’t return for
several years. At this point I knew nothing about Islam. I only learned at school that
Islam was peaceful and tolerant, very similar to Christianity. I was therefore unable to
make the correct conclusions and identify that both Baligha and Modazzer had in fact
been abducted.

Anyway, back to the topic. When I was around 16-17 years old I joined the Progress
Party Youth organisation (FpU) as they were anti-immigration and pro-free-market. Every
single journalist in the country regarded them as racist because of their anti-immigration
program. FrP were under constant attacks from every single media organisation, NGO’s
and all the other political parties. They were called racists and Nazis and were generally
labelled as “fascist pigs”. FrP appealed to me because I had experienced the hypocrisy in
society first hand and I knew already then that they were the only party who opposed
multiculturalism.

It became obvious to me early on that the hypocrisy in society was so prevalent and
overwhelming. I now started to see the connection between Islam, Western media, the
extreme left and the government. I started studying Islamism, Socialism, egalitarianism
and other directions of Political Science and became more aware of what was going on. I
then, for the first time, understood why I hadn’t learned anything of relevance about
Islam at school, and the motives for suppressing the truth on these issues – political
correctness.

Around year 2000 I realised that the democratic struggle against the Islamisation of
Europe, European multiculturalism was lost. It had gone too far. It is simply not possible
to compete democratically with regimes who import millions of voters. 40 years of
dialogue with the cultural Marxists/multiculturalists had ended up as a disaster. It would
now only take 50-70 years before we, the Europeans are in a minority. As soon as I
realised this I decided to explore alternative forms of opposition. Protesting is saying that
you disagree. Resistance is saying you will put a stop to this. I decided I wanted to join
the resistance movement.

However, the main problem then was that there weren’t any alternatives for me at all.
There weren’t any known armed cultural conservative, or Christian, anti-Jihad
movements.

An NS or racist/anti Jewish movement was completely out of the question, as they
represented much of what I oppose. I came in contact with Serbian cultural conservatives
through the internet. This initial contact would eventually result in my contact with
several key individuals all over Europe and the forming of the group who would later
establish the military order and tribunal, PCCTS, Knights Templar. I remember they did a
complete screening and background check to ensure I was of the desired calibre. Two of
them had reservations against inviting me due to my young age but the leader of the
group insisted on my candidature. According to one of them, they were considering
several hundred individuals throughout Europe for a training course. I met with them for
the first time in London and later on two occasions in Balticum. I had the privilege of
meeting one of the greatest living war heroes of Europe at the time, a Serbian crusader
and war hero who had killed many Muslims in battle. Due to EU persecution for alleged
crimes against Muslims he was living at one point in Liberia. I visited him in Monrovia
once, just before the founding session in London, 2002.

I was the youngest one there, 23 years old at the time. One of the key founders
instructed the rest of the group about several topics related to the goal of the
organisation. I believe I scribbled down more than 50 full pages of notes regarding all
possible related topics. Much of these notes are forwarded in the book 2083. It was
basically a detailed long term plan on how to seize power in Western Europe. I did not
fully comprehend at the time how privileged I was to be in the company of some of the
most brilliant political and military tacticians of Europe. Some of us were unfamiliar with
each other beforehand so I guess we all took a high risk meeting face to face. There were
only 5 people in London re-founding the order and tribunal (1 by proxy) but there were
around 25-30 attending in Balticum during the two sessions, individuals from all over
Europe; Germany, France, Sweden, the UK, Denmark, Balticum, Benelux, Spain, Italy,
Greece, Hungary, Austria, Armenia, Lebanon and Russia. Electronic or telephonic
communication was completely prohibited, before, during and after the meetings. On our
last meeting it was emphasised clearly that we cut off contact indefinitely. Any type of
contact with other cells was strictly prohibited.

This was not sessions were regular combat cells were created. It was more like a training
course for pioneer cell commanders. We were not instructed to attack specific targets,
quite the opposite. We were encouraged to rather use the information distributed to
contribute to build and expand the so called ”cultural conservative anti-Jihad movement,
either through spreading propaganda, provide funding for the creation of new groups
through various forums or by recruiting other people directly. All individuals attending the sessions learned about PCCTS, the Knights Templar but they were not specifically
instructed to represent that particular order and tribunal. Everyone was encouraged but
at the end, it was their own decision how they decided to manifest their resistance. A
special emphasis was put on the long term nature of the struggle (50-100 years). Our
task was to contribute to a long term approach and not to act prematurely. If there was a
large scale attack the next 10 years it was said, we should avoid any immediate follow up
attacks as it would negate the shock effect of the subsequent attacks. A large successful
attack every 5-12 years was optimal depending on available forces.

This was not a stereotypical “right wing” meeting full of underprivileged racist skinheads
with a short temper, but quite the opposite. Most of them were successful entrepreneurs,
business or political leaders, some with families, most of them Christian conservatives
but also some agnostics and even atheists. I remember it struck me how impressed I
was regarding how they had set up the screening parameters (for accepting new
candidates). They obviously wanted resourceful pragmatical individuals who were able to
keep information away from their loved ones and who were not in any way flagged by
their governments. Every one of them was supportive of a Judeo Christian Europe and
did not have any reservations against cooperating with non-European Christians Hindu or
Buddhist nationalists. I had or have a relatively close relationship with at least one of
them, an Englishman, who became my mentor. He was the one who first described the
“perfect knight” and had written the initial fundament for this compendium. I was asked,
not only once but twice, by my mentor; let’s call him Richard, to write a second edition of
his compendium about the new European Knighthood. As such, I spent several years to
create an economic platform which would allow me to study and write a second edition.
And as of now, I have spent more than three years completing this second edition.
Perhaps, someone out there will be able to contribute by creating a third edition one day.

Q: What tipped the scales for you? What single event made you decide you
wanted to continue planning and moving on with the assault?

A: For me, personally, it was my government’s involvement in the attacks on Serbia
(NATO bombings in 1999) several years back. It was completely unacceptable how the
US and Western European regimes bombed our Serbian brothers. All they wanted was to
drive Islam out by deporting the Albanian Muslims back to Albania. When the Albanians
refused, they really didn’t have any choice but to use military force. By disallowing the
Serbians the right for self-determination over their sovereign territory they indirectly dug
a grave for Europe. A future where several Mini-Pakistan’s would eventually will be
created in every Western European capital. This is unacceptable, completely
unacceptable.

There have been several issues that have reaffirmed my beliefs since then. Among them;
my governments cowardly handling of the Muhammad Cartoon issue and their decision to
award the Nobel peace prize to an Islamic terrorist (Arafat) and appeasers of Islam.
There have been tens of other issues. My government and our media capitulated to Islam
several years ago, after the Rushdie event. Since then, it has gone downhill. Thousands
of Muslims pouring in annually through our Asylum institution, or by family reunification.
The situation is just chaotic. These suicidal traitors must be stopped. Continue reading →

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Europeans against multiculturalism

John R. Bowen writes:

One of the many signs of the rightward creep of Western European politics is the recent unison of voices denouncing multiculturalism. German Chancellor Angela Merkel led off last October by claiming that multiculturalism “has failed and failed utterly.” She was echoed in February by French President Nicolas Sarkozy and British Prime Minister David Cameron. All three were late to the game, though: for years, the Dutch far right has been bashing supposedly multicultural policies.

Despite the shared rhetoric, it is difficult to discern a common target for these criticisms. Cameron aimed at an overly tolerant attitude toward extremist Islam, Merkel at the slow pace of Turkish integration, and Sarkozy at Muslims who pray in the street.

But while it is hard to know what exactly the politicians of Europe mean when they talk about multiculturalism, one thing we do know is that the issues they raise—real or imagined—have complex historical roots that have little to do with ideologies of cultural difference. Blaming multiculturalism may be politically useful because of its populist appeal, but it is also politically dangerous because it attacks “an enemy within”: Islam and Muslims. Moreover, it misreads history. An intellectual corrective may help to diminish its malign impact.

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Defiant Gaddafi threatens Europe

Al Jazeera reports:

Muammar Gaddafi, the Libyan leader, has delivered a telephone address through loudspeakers to thousands of supporters gathered in Tripoli’s Green Square, warning the NATO-led alliance to stop its war support or face “catastrophe”.

In the Friday speech, 100 days after NATO first entered the country, Gaddafi gave multiple warnings to foreign forces that have been militarily supporting anti-regime rebels for months, to a crowd of supporters who waved green flags and posters of the head of state.

“We advise you to retreat before you face a catastrophe… If we decide to, we are able to move to Europe like locusts, like bees,” Gaddafi said.

Addressing the West, Gaddafi warned that Libyans could take revenge on Europe for supporting of rebel forces.

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The Greek protests are not just about the economic crisis

Aditya Chakraborrty writes:

A sunny Saturday afternoon in central Athens, and Christos Roubanis is sitting outside having a beer, while telling me about the death threats he’s received. We’re in Victoria Square, one of the most racially mixed areas in the capital. The nearby payphones have queues of Bangladeshis waiting outside, and after every few shops comes that telltale feature of immigrant-ville: a Western Union money transfer booth. Locals reckon that more than a third of residents are non-Greek subjects.

And that’s made the neighbourhood the target of fascist activity, especially since Greece plunged into severe recession in 2009. A few minutes down the road is a playground, complete with seesaws, slides and climbing frames. It was where Afghans and others used to take their kids – until the Nazis marched in and declared it a no-go zone a couple of years ago. Although most of the equipment inside looks like it’s working, the entire rec is still locked up.

Just outside, on the stones in front of the handsomely domed church, is daubed various graffiti. “I love my country” reads one in the national colours of blue and white. Another is more direct: “Immigrants go home.” Sprayed on the shutters of nearby shops are swastikas. They look particularly incongruous in a country that tried so heroically to fend off Hitler’s invasion.

Christos lives here, but can’t walk me to the playground for fear of getting beaten up. Bald, with a small greying moustache, he’s previously stepped in to prevent immigrants being hassled – so the Nazis have turned their attention on him. They ring his mobile “and call me a bloody communist and say they will kill me”. Once, he was trapped by a fascist gang brandishing wooden poles. “They brought them this close,” he says, his hand stopping just in front of his thick glasses.

Under the awning of this bar, Christos and his friends Afrodite and Olga can debate how waves of badly-managed immigration have put pressure on this working-class neighbourhood. But one thing they agree on is that the fascists are managing to exploit the tension in the area. In elections at the end of last year, the extremist Golden Dawn party won 10% of the municipal vote.

Numbers like that flatly contradict the cosy view of the popular Greek reaction to the spending cuts as being articulate, engaged, left-wing. And it is – in parts. But as Christos and his neighbours will tell you, the politics of austerity can boost the thuggish right as well as the post-enlightenment left. Indeed, the defining feature of the Greek protests is not ideology – it’s visceral hostility to anything that smacks of the mainstream, whether in politics, or business or the media.

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Athens protests: Syntagma Square on frontline of European austerity protests

The Guardian reports:

Athenians used to stop off at Syntagma Square for the shopping, the shiny rows of upmarket boutiques. Now they arrive in their tens of thousands to protest. Swarming out of the metro station, they emerge into a village of tents, pamphleteers and a booming public address system.

Since 25 May, when demonstrators first converged here, this has become an open-air concert – only one where bands have been supplanted by speakers and music swapped for an angry politics. On this square just below the Greek parliament and ringed by flashy hotels, thousands sit through speech after speech. Old-time socialists, American economists just passing through, members of the crowd: they each get three minutes with the mic, and most of them use the time alternatively to slag off the politicians and to egg on their fellow protesters.

“Being here makes me feel 18 again,” begins one man, his polo shirt stretched tight over his paunch, before talking about his worries about his pension.

The closer you get to the Vouli, the parliament, the more raucous it becomes. Jammed up against the railings, a crowd is clapping and chanting: “Thieves! Thieves!”

There is another mic here, and it’s grabbed by a man wearing a mask of deputy prime minister Theodoros Pangalos: “My friends, we all ate together.” He is quoting the socialist politician, who claimed on TV last year that everyone bore the responsibility for the squandering of public money. Pangalos may have intended his remark as the Greek equivalent of George Osborne’s remark that “We’re all in it together”, but here they’re not having it.”You lying bastard!” They roar back. “You’re so fat you ate the entire supermarket.”

This is an odd alloy of earnestness and pantomime, to be sure, but it’s something else too: Syntagma Square has become the new frontline of the battle against European austerity. And as prime minister George Papandreou battles first to keep his own job, and then to win MPs’ support for the most extreme package of spending cuts, tax rises and privatisations ever faced by any developed country, what happens between this square and the parliament matters for the rest of the eurozone.

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Five reasons why Europe is cracking up

At Open Democracy, José Ignacio Torreblanca writes:

Denmark has reintroduced border controls with the populist excuse of controlling crime. By taking the step, the country that was once a model of democracy, tolerance and social justice has placed itself on the frontlines of a Europe that is increasingly surrendering to fear and xenophobia. Greece, meanwhile, has spent more than a year teetering on a cliff edge and few fellow European governments seem disappointed that it may abandon the euro – some of them are even secretly supporting the markets against Athens. Finland has thrown itself into the arms of xenophobic populism and, following in the footsteps of Slovakia, has refused to finance the bailout of Portugal. With elections around the corner, France and Italy have taken advantage of the Tunisian uprising to restrict the free movement of people within the European Union. And Germany, unhappy at managing the euro crisis amid regional elections, has broken ranks with France and the United Kingdom in the United Nations Security Council, ignoring the Libya crisis and undermining 10 years of European security policy.

With the future of the euro in doubt and the Arab world erupting, European leaders are governing on the basis of opinion polls and electoral processes, hanging on to power through any means possible even if that results in undoing the Europe that it took so much time and so many sacrifices to build. Few times in the past has the European project been so questioned and its disgraces so publicly exposed. It would seem that in the Europe of today, having a large xenophobic political party is obligatory. The truth is that Europe is cracking up along four fault lines: its values, the euro, foreign policy and leadership. If there is no radical change, the integration process could collapse, leaving the future of Europe as an economically and politically relevant entity up in the air.

This crisis is neither brief nor temporary: we are not just going through a bad patch, nor are we victims of groundless pessimism. To see the danger facing the project of European integration we only have to look back one decade. The contrast with the current situation is revealing. After launching the euro on January 1, 1999, the European Union approved the Lisbon Strategy, which promised to make the EU the most dynamic, competitive and sustainable economy in the world. The bloc also committed itself to expanding freedom, security and justice, taking European integration into areas such as policing, justice and immigration, which until then had remained on the sidelines of the construction of Europe. And to crown this process and to give itself a real political union that would allow the bloc to become a relevant global actor in the 21st century world, it launched the process of drafting the European Constitution.

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European powers step up pressure on Syria

Al Jazeera reports:

European powers are increasing pressure on the UN Security Council to break its silence on events in Syria following a bloody government crackdown on pro-democracy protests in the country.

Britain, France, Germany and Portugal have circulated a draft resolution that would condemn the crackdown and demand an immediate end to the violence in Syria.

However, the proposal falls short of calling for military action or further UN sanctions against the Syrian government.

“Today in New York, Britain and France will be tabling a resolution at the Security Council condemning the repression and demanding accountability and humanitarian access,” David Cameron, the British prime minister, said on Wednesday.

“And if anyone votes against that resolution or tries to veto it, that should be on their conscience,” he told parliament members.

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Europe is becoming a safe haven for Israelis

Gideon Levy writes:

The numbers are climbing rapidly and the phenomenon is intriguing: Many Israelis are longing for a second passport. If Shimon Peres (now president ) once promised “a car for every worker,” a second passport is now becoming the object of desire. If our forefathers dreamt of an Israeli passport, there are those among us who are now dreaming of a foreign passport.

A Bar-Ilan University study published in the journal Eretz Acheret has found that roughly 100,000 Israelis already hold a German passport. Over the past decade, the trend has strengthened and some 7,000 more Israelis join them every year. To these should be added the thousands of Israelis who hold foreign passports, mostly European countries. The excuses are strange and diverse, but at the base of them all are unease and anxiety, both personal and national. The foreign passport has become an insurance policy against a rainy day. It turns out there are more and more Israelis who are thinking that day may eventually come.

In recent years the Israeli passport has become useful and effective. It opens the gates of most countries of the world, except for parts of the Arab and Muslim world. It is hard to believe that those applying for a second passport are doing so in order to vacation in Tehran, tour Benghazi or take in the sights of San’a. The alibi that a European passport makes entering the United States easier cannot fully explain the phenomenon, which has no equivalent in other developed countries.

It should not be condemned, though. It reflects a mood, a natural and understandable consequence of the real and imagined fears that have been sown here. When Avrum Burg boasted of his French passport several years ago, a public outcry arose, but in vain. Presumably some of those who cried out did so because they do not have the option, like he does, of obtaining an additional passport for themselves. The others may have since crowded onto the line at one embassy or another.

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Thousands protest against Mladic arrest

Al Jazeera reports:

At least 10,000 Serbian nationalists are estimated to have gathered in central Belgrade to protest against the arrest of Ratko Mladic, the former Bosnian Serb general accused of war crimes.

Sporadic clashes erupted at the rally on Sunday, with several dozen protesters throwing stones at riot police wielding batons.

Supporters of the ultranationalist Serbian Radical Party and other similar organisations had been brought by bus from across the country for the evening rally in the Serbian capital.

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The arrest of Bosnian Serb general Ratko Mladic

Robert Mackey reports:

Mr. Mladic, who was arrested in Serbia on Thursday in connection with the massacre of about 8,000 men and boys at Srebrenica in the days after the enclave for Bosnian Muslims was overrun by his forces, clearly enjoyed being filmed. As the footage of him sauntering around Srebrenica after its capture — toasting the commander of the Dutch peacekeepers he had just humiliated, pleasantly asking a young boy his age (while perhaps weighing if a 12-year-old could be considered of military age) — he appeared proud of what his forces had achieved and acted, for the cameras, almost more like a politician than a general.

The makers of a PBS documentary, “Srebrenica: A Cry From the Grave,” later used much of the footage shot by the cameras that accompanied Mr. Mladic during that week in 1995 to put together a chilling timeline of his hands-on leadership of the campaign. Here is one part of that documentary:

It was not until a decade later that video of a very different character, also filmed that week in Srebrenica, showing in graphic detail the execution of prisoners, was broadcast on Serbian television.

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Europe’s Obamaphilia says more about its own weakness than the US president

Gary Younge writes:

In his book Audacity of Hope, Barack Obama described himself as a Rorschach test – the famous psychological experiment where people are shown a series of ink blots and asked to identify what they see in them. There is no right answer. But each response in its own way, is thought to reveal the patient’s obsessions and anxieties.

So it is with Obama. In the last week he has been disparaged as the “most successful food stamp president in history” by Newt Gingrich and a spineless “black mascot” of Wall Street by the prominent black academic Cornel West.

“I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views,” he said. “As such I am bound to disappoint some if not all of them.”

But one of the most curious things about those who support him most is not their disappointments – given their high hopes for him, that’s to be expected – but their enduring devotion in the face of those disappointments. It’s as though each single disillusionment is consumed as its own discrete letdown. String them together and you have not a narrative of failing to deliver on promises, but a litany of isolated, separate chapters – each with its own caveats, exceptions and explanations.

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Liberté, égalité, fraternité – unless you choose to wear a burqa

The Associated Press reports:

Police on Saturday arrested 61 people — including 19 women — for attempting to hold an outlawed Paris protest against France’s pending ban on face-covering Islamic veils, a top police official said.

Fifty-nine people were detained while trying to demonstrate at Place de la Nation in eastern Paris, as were two others while traveling there from Britain and Belgium, said Nicolas Lerner, chief of staff for the Paris police chief.

The arrests come amid in a rising, if small, groundswell of controversy over Monday’s start of an official ban of garments that hide the face, which includes Muslim veils such as the slit-eyed niqab and the full face-covering burqa. Women who disobey the law risk a fine, special classes and a police record.

Viv Groskop writes:

There was a time when Shazia Mirza, stand-up comic and British Asian Muslim, performed as a character who wore a hijab. She doesn’t now. But she still has a good line on the full-body veil. “All my cousins in France wear the burqa. Which is great. Because they all use the same bus pass.”

Not any more. Tomorrow, France launches a full-scale ban. For Sarkozy and his friends, the burqa is no joke. It’s dangerous and illegal. Women wearing the burqa and the niqab (the more common facial veil) will not exactly be arrested on sight. But if they wear a veil over their face in a public place, anyone can ask them to uncover their face – or leave. Not quite stop and search. Just stop and unmask. If a woman refuses to co-operate, citizens are advised to call the police. The fine is €150.

Does this sound a little unfriendly to you? If so, be very worried. Because this trend is spreading. A ban is already in operation in Belgium and under discussion in Canada, Denmark and Spain. It is likely to become law in the Netherlands this year or next. There have been calls in Sweden for the niqab to be prohibited in schools and universities.

A de facto ban already exists in Italy (where a 1975 antiterrorism law forbids the covering of the face) and Berlusconi’s party has drafted a new, more specific ruling. Last year, a Tunisian woman was fined €500 for wearing a burqa in Italy’s Piedmont region.

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Europeans are losing their illusions about Israel

Daud Abdullah writes:

In Europe, Israel has historically enjoyed a high level of support, not least because it was perceived as a progressive democracy in a sea of Arab backwardness. At the same time, most Europeans knew very little about the Israel-Palestine conflict: as recently as 2004, the Glasgow University Media Group found that only 9% of British students knew that the Israelis were the illegal occupiers of Palestinian land. Astonishingly, there were actually more people (11%) who believed that the Palestinians were occupying the territories.

However, according to a new poll by ICM for the Middle East Monitor, Europeans’ perception of Israel has changed decisively, and their understanding of the Israel-Palestine conflict, while still giving some cause for concern, has improved significantly. The survey of 7,000 people in Germany, France, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands and Britain reveals only a small minority (10%) now believe their countries should support Israel rather than the Palestinians, while many more, 39%, think they should not.

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