A big hat tip to Kathy Shaidle’s hubby for pointing out yet another instance of preemptive sharia compliance from a Western government. In this case, a Canadian departmental agency has decided to cancel the permit for a Draw Mohammed Day event slated to take place on Parliament Hill. For those of you who may have forgotten, this is the same site of a jihadist attack upon the Canadian National War Memorial which took the life of Cpl. Nathan Cirillo last year. So, contrary to much public posturing by elected officials, the terrorists really are winning, at least insofar as  one of their primary goals, i.e. silencing any substantive, critical discussion of Islam, is being achieved-by their ostensible enemies, no less!

For more detailed coverage of this latest capitulation in the clash of civilizations, head over to Creeping Sharia, which links to some astute analysis of the current state of our freedoms by Mark Steyn, among others.

Most of you have probably already heard about UKIP’s stunning gains in this past week’s elections to the European parliament. The ruling media complex has reacted predictably, as has the man chiefly responsible for  the destruction that mass immigration from the third world has wrought upon Great Britain. As an antidote, I recommend reading Brenda Walker’s contribution to the discussion, which includes a surprisingly astute appraisal of UKIP’s victory by the Tories’ paper of record, The Spectator.

Congratulations to UKIP and its visionary leadership, including leader Nigel Farage! Granted, it’s simply by-elections-the real test lies ahead-but anytime you can anger and frighten the multi-culti, metropolitan,middle class, left wing pricks at the Beeb and their Guardianista comrades to this extent, you know you’ve hit pay dirt. The debate over coercive multiculturalism and ahistoric, politically engineered mass immigration to Great Britain, as well as the legal/moral double standards these policies engender, has finally begun in earnest, despite the best efforts of that nation’s gatekeepers to ruthlessly suppress it.

Just as the UK Independence Party exposed the folly of the European integration project, so it will lead the charge to restore common sense to that country’s immigration policies. Three cheers from across the Atlantic!

Dogmatism and obfuscation mark virtually any media discussion of the subject of immigration-a pattern which holds true both domestically and abroad-but Sky News managed to conduct a good interview of Nigel Farage, standard bearer for the UK Independence Party, nonetheless. The Week provides a brief summary of what caused  two caring English foster parents to have the child they had cared for ripped from their arms by a Labour council that George Orwell would have had difficulty  imagining.

For those of you who believe this to be an anomalous event, you obviously haven’t been paying attention. Six years ago the government of the United Kingdom attempted to criminalize blaspheming Islam, and although unsuccessful-by a single vote-it’s hard to believe that this issue won’t reappear once the process of strip-mining Great Britain is closer to completion. The Farage interview is illustrative of the fact that not every individual wants to embrace the brave new world charted by our current statesmen, who have decided in their infinite wisdom to elect a new people.

The global jihad against speech-aided and abetted by our enemedia-was the primary subject of discussion at the SION conference this past Tuesday, and the panels assembled represented the full spectrum of thought and action that is being suppressed as a result of the collaboration between government officials-both elected and unelected-intent on “managing” our ever-diminishing pool of  liberty, the custodians of the fifth estate, and the presumptive caliphate which is using them as its ideological cat’s paw. The mobs overwhelming embassies in North Africa and the Middle East and slaughtering American citizens represent the physical violence that most associate with the term jihad, yet there is another more potent element of jihadist doctrine which involves employing coercive means more subtle than car bombs, rocket propelled-grenades, and Kalashnikovs.

The most powerful and efficacious weapon against jihadist ideology is, in fact, the truth. Which is why the vanguards of Islam and their accomplices go to such great lengths in order to suppress the means through which the truth is disseminated. That was the main theme of the second panel of the Stop Islamization of Nations Congress, which comprised men and women from England-until recently, one of the most resilient bastions of free expression on the planet-and Australia, a much younger parliamentary democracy whose citizens find themselves caught beneath a resurgent Islamic tidal wave facilitated by its leaders abandonment of sound immigration policy.

Debbie Robinson, of the Q Society, gave us a detailed overview of the parlous situation Australians find themselves in due to the proliferation of Muslim immigrants faithful to the Koran now living on a continent built upon British common law. The most recent  manifestation of this danger can be found in Muslim Brotherhood acolytes calling for the summary execution of the filmmaker who, in their eyes, committed blasphemy, exploiting the very freedom which they could never hope to enjoy in one of the many despotic Muslim nations from which they emigrated.

However, the question of sharia law’s application in Australia is not one of recent vintage, despite the befuddled media coverage of jihadi demonstrations in that nation’s capital this week. In fact, it is a question which has become so embedded within national discourse that a former Chief Justice of Australia has publicly rejected the notion that sharia law can coexist with the laws of his country. You need look no further than the scourging  a convert to Wahabbism received at the hands of his masked attackers to realize that this isn’t a theoretical debate for Australians. Is it really that far-fetched to conceive of a day when the punishment meted out to a member of the Burns’ Gang in the drama The Proposition might befall the unfortunate recipient of justice from a sharia court?

That question is even more pertinent to the men who came to New York City from England, which some would characterize as Ground Zero in the war between Islamic supremacism and Western societal norms.

Kevin Carroll of the English Defense League-seen above-described some of the battles in this titanic struggle. Currently running for sheriff in a newly created constituency, Mr. Carroll and other members of the EDL have been subjected not only to physical attacks-some so violent as to require hospitalization-by crypto-fascist, Marxist goon squads and their Islamist accomplices, but have been persecuted by the English authorities, which view those exercising their rights to assemble lawfully and express support for the United Kingdom as posing more of an exigent threat than those organizing terror plots in what is now the hub of pan-Islamic nationalism and jihad within Europe.

The extent to which the inherent rights exercised by Englishmen and women have been curtailed in the name of insulating Islam and its practitioners from any substantive criticism was brought home by Tommy Robinson, the founder and leader of the English Defense League. A life-long resident of town of Luton in the county of Bedfordshire, England,  Robinson embodies the selfless patriotism and commitment to family that were once hallmarks of the English working class. Unfortunately, today he represents a besieged minority under attack on the streets, in the courtroom, and in the yellow press for defending what the intelligentsia consider antiquated notions of Englishness. Instead of resisting the Islamists and their leftist shock troops who are threatening the lives of Robinson and his family, the British police have instructed him to remove himself from Luton-his childhood home-lest he antagonize the Muslim supremacists behind  one of England’s numerous, unofficial Sharia law zones.

The skewed priorities of UK law enforcement-which view the EDL as posing a more exigent threat than the intellectual progeny of Bin Laden did not come as a surprise. What did strike me though was Tommy Robinson’s almost apologetic defense of the gifts he brings to bear in this struggle against Islamic nationalism and its infection of contemporary Europe. He made the inexorable point that, unlike the rest of the continent, Great Britain-with a few notable exceptions-does not have any towering intellectuals or courageous political leaders to rally public opinion on behalf of the Enlightenment values which are now imperiled. The political class within the UK is effectively neutered, spinelessness being virtually a prerequisite for public office, as Tommy and his cousin Kevin Carroll pointed out during their speeches.

The same can be said of most British pseudo-intellectuals, who are equally culpable for the disastrous cultural and spiritual degradation of contemporary Great Britain. The political extermination Northern Irish classicist, poet and parliamentarian Enoch Powell experienced at the hands of England’s opinion-shapers for daring to question the status quo is one of the main reasons why the fight against Islamist ideology is being led by men like Tommy Robinson and Kevin Carroll, although I don’t believe either man has to qualify the vitally important elements of courage and honesty in identifying the problems facing Britain they both bring to this task. After all, the battle over whether sharia law and Islamic doctrine should prevail over the values of the Magna Carta and the Glorious Revolution will be decided in the streets and the homes of ordinary Britons, not intellectual salons in London.

That said, the address delivered by George Igler, the creator of the Discourse Institute, outlined the intellectual argument against the UK’s increasingly restrictive view of individual liberty. At least, that liberty not enjoyed by Islamic ideologues. The son of parents who experienced the absence of liberty firsthand behind the Iron Curtain of Communist Hungary, Igler recognizes the inherent tenuousness of liberties that most Westerners have taken for granted for centuries. His speech focused upon the ways in which British bureaucrats and politicians had distorted the relationship between man and state, pointing out that our sufferance of government is tied exclusively to the protection of inalienable-and non government-derived-rights. This compact has been abrogated by a state that now views its function as maintaining stability in inter-communal relations, which means that some groups, e.g. Muslim immigrants from Pakistan, Bangladesh, Bosnia-as well as their offspring-are given protection from the critical speech of groups like the EDL. This fundamental negation of rights illustrates why conferences like the Stop Islamization of Nations Congress are so urgent at this moment in time.

They, along with the Discourse Institute, wouldn’t be necessary if the “free” press exercised its right to dissent from political and religious orthodoxy, rather than attempting to hunt down individuals who blasphemed Islam or to blacken the name of patriotic citizens who want to ensure that their children enjoy the same freedoms they once did. But the fact remains that we are not only facing an aggressive, resurgent political Islam, but a much greater threat posed by those who would do away with our patrimony from England, and ultimately, Greece, in order to placate the sensitivities of an ideology with whom no mutual reciprocity exists and which, according to its holy book-none can be achieved.

In Part III of our report, we’ll be examining how the threat of Islamic jihad is experienced by those in the continent from which the armies of Mohammed first emerged.

Our last Rattle of 2011 runs the gamut, all the way from an immigration enforcement success in Pennsylvania to a disappointing judicial setback in South Carolina. However, we begin the final roundup of the year with a must-read essay in The American Conservative by W. James Antle III. It looks at the immigration scorecard in a sober, realistic analysis that takes into account the substantive victories of immigration reformers-such as continued nationwide support for SB 1070 and its clones-to the unquestionable failures, including a seismic change in the language of the immigration debate, which has turned the phrase “immigration reform” into a synonym for wholesale amnesty. It’s a piece that anyone who is concerned about this subject-as I know most of you are-should read in its entirety. 

We continue by highlighting a great post over at the American Thinker that poses several questions that Newt Gingrich has yet to satisfactorily answer about his dubious proposal to create a tiered system of permanent non-citizen workers out of the pool of 11-20 million illegal aliens currently living here. Be John Galt  expresses some other concerns that have yet to be addressed by Newt while emphasizing the points made by Mickey Kaus in his own analysis of Newt’s plan. Something that conservatives supporting Gingrich-but who are ostensibly opposed to amnesty-need to answer is why they’re backing a candidate whose immigration platform mirrors the one put forward by open borders, libertarian economist Bryan Caplan.

Staying in the field of presidential politicking, American Rattlesnake wholeheartedly endorses the statements of Mitt Romney, vis-a-vis President Obama’s illegal alien uncle, Onyango Obama. For those of you who might not recall, Omar Onyango Obama is not only residing in this country illegally-much like the President’s beloved Aunt Zeituni-but is the owner and operator of a liquor store in Boston, despite his recent DUI conviction.

Meanwhile, Mitt Romney’s opponent Rick Perry continued his tough on the border pantomime in Iowa, decrying the inability of the federal government to control our southern border with Mexico, as well as declaring that he would withdraw the Justice Department’s lawsuits against states like Arizona and Alabama. The pull quote from this article is “the border has to be shut down for the future of the United States of America.” One wonders what he would do with the estimated forty percent of illegal aliens who overstay their visas. I suppose we’ll just have to wait and see how serious Governor Perry is about his newfound posture of immigration hawk.

It does seem that the current crop of presidential candidates is being forced to address the concerns of Republican voters, however reluctantly and haltingly. That said, VDare has a fascinating piece exploring the damage that refugee resettlement has caused in Manchester, New Hampshire, and why the national GOP has been completely AWOL on this issue, despite its ritualistic paeans to the role of New Hampshire as the first state in the nation to hold its presidential primary. The politically courageous current mayor of Manchester is standing up for his constituents, even if the federal government and parasitical members of the refugee resettlement industry won’t. Perhaps the boldness of Ted Gatsas will serve as an example for his timorous counterparts in the national GOP to emulate. We can all hope.

The internal strife caused by the U.S. State Department in Maine is mirrored in Florence, Italy, where the tragic deaths of two Senegalese street merchants is being exploited by media organs to condemn the “racism” of ordinary Italians. Sadly, the exploitation of tragedies like this for political purposes is nothing new to the multicultural zealots spearheading the militant, Gramscian left. Nor is the equation of patriotic, reasonable opposition to mass immigration to racism an anomaly, unfortunately. It seems like these sorts of ad hominem attacks come with the territory, as Peter Brimelow pointed out in yesterday’s post.

Heading down to Washington D.C., we find that the usual rogue’s gallery of open borders demagogues is trying once again to foist amnesty upon an American public, and a Congress, that has consistently rejected it since it was first introduced over a decade ago.  The tireless efforts of Dick Durbin to give the bird to American taxpayers and hard-working students wouldn’t be newsworthy in itself, if not for the fact that a Philippine newspaper is now leading the charge to see the enactment of the DREAM Act. Media bias in reporting of immigration issues is nothing new, especially from foreign newspapers who hold no reverence for American law. However, the fact that a member of the United States Senate is cribbing notes from a newspaper overseas in order to undermine the country he’s ostensibly representing is a sad commentary on the state of politics in America in 2011.

Taking a short jaunt to Baltimore, we say farewell to WBAL institution Ron Smith. Before being struck down by cancer at the age of 70, Smith was a resonant voice of reason and integrity in a world where too may fall prey to the lure of the D.C. cocktail circuit. Gregory Kane has a fitting tribute to him in the Washington Examiner. Michelle Malkin testifies to the humanity of Ron on her website as well. Like the late, great Terry Anderson-another immigration patriot who died last year-Ron Smith will be missed by many people across the country, most of whom never knew him personally. Rest in Peace, Ron.

In slightly cheerier news, the Pennsylvania House of Representatives has approved a bill that would penalize employers who hire illegal workers. Fox News Latino has the entire story, which touches upon similar bills that were eventually enacted in states like Alabama and Arizona. On the other hand, the drive for immigration enforcement suffered a blow in South Carolina, where a federal judge has enjoined a law that cracked down on human smuggling and gave law enforcement officers the opportunity to detain those arrested for unrelated crimes if they were illegal aliens. As Governor Nikki Haley’s spokesman has said, the ultimate resolution of this case rests in the hands of the Supreme Court.

Our neighbor to the north is having its own immigration problems, which  have been amply documented by American Rattlesnake in previous updates. Canada’s capable Immigration Minister Jason Kenney is tackling them in stride, initiating the largest crackdown on citizenship fraud in recent memory. Of course, his proactive initiatives-including an innovative tip line ordinary Canadians can use to report cases of immigration fraud-have earned scorn from the usual suspects. Notwithstanding the carping from bottom-feeding immigration attorneys and radical, open borders socialists, Kenney has earned respect from the public and his adversaries across the aisle, as this National Post article demonstrates.

If only our president had cabinet members willing to stand up for their fellow countrymen. Instead, we have Hilda Solis, the U.S. Secretary of Labor, doing everything in her capacity to empower illegal aliens instead of the Americans who are struggling beneath a crushing unemployment rate and prolonged recession. Even as the unemployment rate plummets in the Yellowhammer State because of HB 56, Solis tries to find ways to double down on the failure of the Obama administration to provide economic opportunities for American citizens. Combined with the administration’s decision to remove the last remaining National Guard troops from our southern border, Barack Obama has demonstrated his disdain for the concerns of the American electorate.

In other administration news, the head of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, Alan Bersin, has resigned from his post. An unconfirmed recess appointment by President Obama, Bersin will be replaced by David V. Aguilar. But don’t worry open borders enthusiasts, Mr. Aguilar is four square in favor of amnesty, although he prefers to call it something else.

Finally, the ongoing congressional investigations into Operation Fast and Furious and this administration’s persistent coverup continue apace. We now have Senator Joseph Lieberman, previously known for his atrocious record on immigration issues, directing the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, which he currently chairs, to investigate the interagency “miscommunication” that lies at the heart of the Fast and Furious debacle. Let’s hope that he and Senator Grassley can elicit a more responsive reaction by administration officials than we’ve seen in the past. What is certain is that the men and woman who were killed, including Agent Jaime Zapata, as a result of the Justice Department’s and ATF’s negligence will never return to the warm embrace of their loved ones. If nothing else, let’s push for some measure of justice and accountability for those still alive.

Hat Tips: The Tea Party Immigration Coalition NCFreedom and NAFBPO

Some of you might be wondering why I haven’t yet addressed the horrific Utoya shootings and bombings targeting Regjeringskvartalet which occurred this weekend. The simple answer is that I don’t think there’s much of substance that I can add to the discussion, other than deploring the unspeakable actions of the mass murderer and expressing my deepest condolences to the people of Norway, especially the loved ones of the over seventy young men and women who lost their lives on the island located on the picturesque lake seen in the photograph above.

On a deeper level, I feel that one of the chief assets of this website is its ability to move beyond a reactive, evanescent analysis of our societal problems. The fact that American Rattlesnake is not a prisoner of the moment, and does not attempt to serve as a running commentary-or blog, if you prefer-upon every single event, no matter how momentous, is one of the distinctive features of this website.

However, I would like to add a personal note about the febrile media campaign that has begun to take shape in the wake of this horrific tragedy. The attempt to ascribe blame for this atrocity to individuals other than the mad man who initiated it is bad enough, but the metanarrative publications like the New York Times are attempting to weave in order to impugn the philosophical beliefs  and integrity of their perceived enemies is absolutely galling. As someone who’s known Pamela Geller for years and considers her a dear friend, and who has met Robert Spencer on several occasions, I feel compelled to address the libelous allegations that are being leveled against them by their inquisitors in the mainstream media.

Although I believe it perfectly fair and even desirable to inquire into the motives of the killer, and to examine what-if anything-led him to take such a craven, contemptible course, I don’t believe that the concerted effort to demonize Pamela and Robert is a sincere attempt on the part of the drive-by media to uncover the “root” causes of the senseless Utoya slaughter. Rather, it is simply the latest installment in a seemingly endless campaign to delegitimize anyone and everyone who holds heterodox opinions regarding a host of issues, including multiculturalism, immigration, and the role of Islam in contemporary Western society. Lest you think that this fusillade of invective is restricted to conservative anti-Islamists, I refer you to the hatchet job undertaken by Nicholas Kristof in an attempt to bury liberal feminist, Islamic apostate, and international crusader for women’s rights Ayaan Hirsi Ali.

The attacks on Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer are not any more truthful than the assault against her. What’s more, they only serve to overshadow and obscure the horror that has unfolded in Norway, which has permanently scarred hundreds of innocent individuals who will have wounds in their hearts and souls that will never be repaired by time. The fact that their trauma and pain is being press-ganged to serve the noisome, petty agenda of the dominant media organs in this country and in Europe is something that I find absolutely abhorrent. I have faith that the reputations of both Pamela and Robert will remain intact, despite the repeated attempts to tarnish them by tying their followers to the actions of someone wholly divorced from reality. Unfortunately, the time spent vilifying them, which could have been spent commemorating the lives of the individuals who were cut down in this monstrous massacre, can never be replaced.

From the invaluable European weblog The Gates of Vienna comes a deeply disturbing video that highlights the extent of illegal migration currently afflicting the continent, especially now that the ‘Arab Spring’ has loosened border controls throughout North Africa and the Middle East.

The confluence of  liberalized intra-European visa requirements, large scale exoduses from failed Arab-Muslim states across the Mediterranean, and a European Union still unable to effectively address the “peaceful” invasion that is starting to resemble a real-life version of The Camp of the Saints, has turned what was once a minor inconvenience into a problem with potentially disastrous consequences for the future of Europe. 

Christopher Caldwell examined the inexorable changes European nations are undergoing in his book Reflections on the Revolution in Europe, which should serve as a warning to American policy-makers and liberal actvists who routinely extol multiculturalism and mass immigration as the ultimate solution to America’s irredeemably racist past. In fact, the new Islamic immigrants have not ameliorated the racial and religious hatreds that wracked Europe during the 20th century. If anything, they’ve reinvigorated long-dormant feelings of anti-Semitism and bigotry, and given a new lease on life to native European racists. From Londonistan’s boycott of Holocaust Remembrance Day, to the sustained jihad waged within formerly peaceful Swedish hamlets like Malmo, to the French banlieues that have become so anarchic that they are the subject of futuristic, apocalyptic, yet not entirely implausible, action films modeled after movies like The Running Man, Europe’s grand experiment has proven to be a colossal failure. 

The shocking video above should stand as a pointed reminder of what can happen to a place that has lost sight of its roots, which in this case stem from Enlightenment values, the Renaissance, and Western civilization at its very core, i.e. classical Greece and Rome. That genuine European heritage is the very antithesis of the ersatz culture Eurocrats are trying to fashion from the seeds of politically correct, leftist dogma, post-war bureaucratization and hierarchy, and massive waves of unassimilable Islamic immigrants. That segment should serve as a sobering message to all of us of what happens when we cede the right to determine our future on our terms. Today those images come from Europe, but can America be far behind?

If there’s one subject the mainstream media loves to skirt it’s the problems caused by Islamic expansionism in the developing world. If there’s another subject the MSM loves to avoid, it’s the problems caused by massive migrations of people into previously ethnically/religiously homogeneous nations.

The volatile political situation currently unfolding in the Ivory Coast highlights the overlap between both problems in an acute way. While many media outlets are depicting the battle between supporters of  President Laurent Gbagbo and Alessane Outtara as simply a fight between the southern and northern parts of Cote d’Ivoire, the truth is much more complex. As this astute analysis points out, one of the chief reasons that Mr. Outtara emerged victorious from this most recent, disputed election is because he was supported by almost all the immigrants who settled in the Ivory Coast from its Muslim neighbors, e.g. Burkina Faso, Mali, etc…

In other words, the people who were brought to the country-one of the most prosperous in West Africa, and an oasis of stability at one point in time-as laborers eventually became permanent residents who disrupted the existing political dynamics of the Ivory Coast. This is the difficulty you face with unchecked immigration, especially of people that share a completely different set of values than the native population. It’s why the constant clamor for guest-worker programs from the likes of Tamar Jacoby and Jason Riley should fall on deaf ears in this country.

While the concept of “workers” sounds appealing at first blush, the fact that those “guest” workers bring values and prejudices-like those workers who have now completely transformed the Ivory Coast-is something left unexamined by immigration’s biggest boosters. Before we allow millions of people to come here to “work” we should ask ourselves what else they will do once they’ve established roots in this country.