Rep. Hank Johnson (D-Ga.) is afraid that the U.S. Territory of Guam is going to "tip over and capsize" due to overpopulation.Not making it up.
Johnson expressed his worries during a House Armed Services Committee hearing on the defense budget Friday.
Ismail testified that he stepped out of the eatery for brief walk when the incidents took place which escalated to a point where Pardy threw two glasses of water at Earle and the comedian took the sunglasses off Pardy’s head, broke then in two, and threw them at her.Pathetic journalism: the witness who contradicts Pardy's testimony (Pardy said she didn't heckle) isn't even named or described; we don't even know which side called him/her.
He also testified that Earle was not his employee, but rather a volunteer comedian who acted as MC.
“He was never employed,” said Ismail adding that he set up a tab of $50 for the comedians on open-mic nights.
The hearing, which continues Wednesday, also heard from two other witnesses. One testified that Pardy and her friends heckled Earle and insulted him, while another said Earle targeted the table where Pardy sat.
I thought this woman I had never seen before has a rather self-righteous bearing, the kind of "evil" that can't be good for understanding the bases of conflicts, and something that is easily manipulated by Palestinian victim theatre. Today I see Barry Rubin has this to say about her.Check it out. Rubin provides a good analysis of the Western pathology that rebels against existentially discomfiting realities while dreaming of the Gnostic key - the necessary "solution" - that will open all doors to Peace, Love, and Holy Sibship. His opening statement strikes a mood:
The fact that she holds such a position—in effect, she's the European Union's first foreign minister—shows Europe is in serious trouble. For Ashton’s main previous claim to fame was as a leader in the Soviet-oriented movement for nuclear disarmament of the West.If Ms. Ashton's only claim to fame is her involvement in that quintessential movement of the 1970s British left, the campaign to outlaw another difficult reality - the bomb - while sympathizing with a tyrannical empire - my mind wanders and wonders, could Robert Plant be singing to the the EUtopian empire's latest smile?
Here is what Tarek Fatah might have said:Now I take that "polygamy" to mean "polytheist"; it's the kind of copy error that creeps into a lengthy excoriation.
"Well, Steve, I'm afraid you've got it wrong. I'm afraid that in the Qur'an, and in many Hadith deemed by most authoritative muhaddithin to be the most authentic Muhammad's own behavior, his words and his acts, show that the message -- Kill the Unbelievers - certainly is there, explicitly in some places, and in many other places, it is the implicit message. And that, Steve, is exactly the kind of thing we have to know about, if we are to have any hope of convincing Muslims to re-interpret the Qur'an, to see it as a historical document, to put it back into history, and thus to truly "contextualize" what Muhammad said and did, as part of early seventh-century Arabia, as reflecting the mores and attitudes of that time, but not as if Muhammad himself were divine - Muslims like to mock Christians for believing in the divinity of Christ - and to convince themselves that to treat Muhammad as the Perfect Man, al-insan al-kamil, is to endow him with a quasi-divinity that comes perilously close to shirk, that is, polygamy. We must, Steve, if we are to save Islam, change its teachings, re-configure its meanings. I know this, I admit this, and that is what I am trying, nel mio piccolo, in my own little way, to do."
In Hamburg, a teacher displayed to his class a pamphlet, The Jews in the U.S.A., with pictures of New York City's Mayor LaGuardia beside a gorilla, "Jewish Judge Marcus Pecora" (presumably meaning New York Justice Ferdinand Pecora—who is a gentile), the "Jewess" Madam Secretary Frances Perkins. At lesson's end, the teacher asked: "And what do you think of a country like that?" The class roared the Nazi Party battle cry: Judah verrecke! ("Death to the Jews!").
Gregor Ziemer dutifully chronicled his observations in a book released to great success in November 1941:"If we are to combat the spirit of German youth with our own spirit of Democracy, it will have to be ... a spirit as fiery in its concentration as Naziism is in German schools. . . . Hitler is making fanatics. We should at least make believers. . . .
When war with Germany soon came upon them, American audiences not yet familiar with the contents of Ziemer's book would be greeted with not just one, but two movie adaptations.
The first treatment of Ziemer's book was, interestingly, made into animated form, by no less than the Walt Disney studio, in early 1943. Fresh from the artistic heights reached in Fantasia (1940) and Bambi (1942), the film showcases a realistic style seldom explored in their other, more humorous cartoons. Their adapation is not without humor: the studio's funniest animator, Ward Kimball, handles some comedy relief material illustrating der fuhrer in a symbolic fairy tale (revealing, I suspect, how the war inevitably coarsened popular culture at the time), while two of the company's best "actors with a pencil", Ollie Johnston and Bill Tytla, handle the touching classroom sequence between young Hans (animated by Johnson, suggesting the same innocence he brought to his work on the young rabbit Thumper in Bambi) and the overbearing schoolteacher (an exuberant performance by Tytla, surpassing the energy he brought to puppeteer Stromboli's similar tirades in the 1939 Disney film Pinocchio). The cartoon ends on a visual virtual kick-to-the-stomach... one imagines how powerful an impact the climax must have made upon the minds of audiences at the time, many with fathers, husbands, brothers, uncles and friends in faraway battlefields facing off against the very enemy the film portrays so grimly...
The "Hitler's Children" mentioned in the Disney film's title is an allusion to RKO's 1943 live action adaptation of the book, enlivened by its producer Ed Golden with what he thought would be a more marketable title. His financial gamble ("who wants to see a film with 'Hitler' in the title?", ran the conventional wisdom of the day) paid off handsomely: filmed on a shoestring budget of $175,000, the film went on to gross millions. By October 1943 the film's success made news, and Time Magazine estimated its return as between $2 and $3 million dollars, making it a bigger box office hit than any previous RKO release, including King Kong. In his autobiography the film's director Edward Dimitrik later estimated that by the end of the war the total gross for Hitler's Children was closer to $7 million! (At .30 cents a ticket, in those days, even the lower estimates make for a lot of customers...)
We examine this other cinematic adaptation of Gregor Ziemer's Education For Death in what may seem an indirect way, as the subject of this week's Radio Memories, our occasional Sunday foray into the bygone art form of Radio Drama.
Before the arrival of television, radio offered its listeners a wide variety of dramatic programming, plays performed not for the eye, as with tv, but for the ear, or more specifically: a theater for the mind.
One of the highest-rated, and longest-lasting dramatic radio programs was The Lux Radio Theater, spanning two decades from 1934 up to 1955. Their gimmick was adapting popular movies into radio plays, either "old" classics or fresh releases then making the rounds of regional theatrical markets. (Films were rolled out area by area in those economically-strapped days, rather than every screen all at once, as has been the modern practice for some time.)
Tonight's Radio Memories offering features the Lux Radio Theater adaptation of RKO's live action version of Hitler's Children, broadcast from a Hollywood at war, on May 24, 1943.
The battlefields change, but the battles go on, as whole generations today are still taught to hate, challenging us in our time to find the same resolve demanded by Gregor Ziemer in 1941:
"Young Germany is awake and ready to die. Let young America and its parents, its instructors, and advisers be awake and ready to live."
Free-enterprising, impersonal markets may seem cutthroat and mean-spirited.This is because many social scientists have little conception of what a covenant is or how it works or how it can be renewed in the midst of modernity. There are certain things that prouldy empirical sciences and reasoning - and contemporary academic anthropology is largely empirical and anti-theoretical - just can't see, though it is important for us to note when, given the weight of historical developments, empirical sciences are encouraged in taking baby steps towards seeing or measuring what they can no longer readily ignore...
But a provocative new study says markets have been a force for good over the last 10,000 years, helping to drive the evolution of more trusting and cooperative societies.
"We live in a much kinder, gentler world than most humans have lived in," says anthropologist Joe Henrich of the University of B.C., lead author of the study that helps topple long-held stereotypes.
The finding, reported today in the journal Science, suggests people trust and play fair with strangers because markets and religion -- not some deep psychological instinct inherited from our dim tribal past -- have helped shape our neural circuitry over the eons.
The 13 researchers on Henrich's international team spent time -- and played clever psychological games -- with more than 2,000 people in 15 different societies.
One researcher trekked to Bolivia to play the games with the Tsimane people who hunt and forage for food in the rain forest. Another anthropologist introduced the games to the Hadza living in small nomadic groups on the savannah in Tanzania. At the other end of the human spectrum, the researchers studied wage earners in Accra, Ghana, and Missouri, in the American Midwest.
In each of the 15 societies they recruited volunteers to play Dictator, Ultimatum and Third-Party Punishment -- games widely used by researchers to gauge people's willingness to share with strangers, and punish people who make unfair allocations.
The study found that the likelihood that people "played fair" with strangers increased with the degree people were integrated into markets and participated in a world religion. Participants in the larger-scale societies were also more likely to punish players who did not play fair.
The hunter-gatherer and tribal societies studied are known for sharing among family and close acquaintances. But the researchers found fair play in monetary transactions with strangers was almost an alien concept. People in the simpler societies treated strangers less fairly, and were less likely to punish people who kept most of the money for themselves.
Social scientists -- and economists in particular -- have long been baffled at the way people in large societies are so trusting and fair in dealings with strangers. Many academics have argued it is a throwback to a time when humans were hunter-gatherers.
Henrich and his colleagues say their findings indicate playing fair with strangers is a behaviour that was favoured as the size of societies and populations grew.But there is no mention of which of these "world religions" does a better job. Clearly, the (post)Christian world is economically more advanced that the Islamic world. Islamic antisemitism will be, I suspect, the subject of my next post. However, this is not to suggest that Islam is not a definite improvement, for Muslims, in comparison to the unmediated tribalism of old Arabia. But if one form of religion is better than another, then why not also say that some forms of the higher form are also better...?
The emergence and growth of markets allowed for the exchange of goods, skills and knowledge and enabled large complex societies to emerge and function, says Henrich, noting that humans in large societies are not nearly as selfish as some would suggest.
"There are all these aspects to our lives that just seem to work, because we are not actually baboons," says Henrich in an interview.
He says life -- and commerce -- would be much different without trust and fair play: "Shoplifting would be a constant threat. Fruit sellers couldn't put fruit in front of their stores. Cab drivers would have to take the money up front."
The study also suggests world religions, such as Christianity and Islam, were a potent evolutionary force, favouring the growth of complex societies by reinforcing fairness and trust.
"The problem with large, impersonal societies is there is lots of opportunity to cheat at the margins, and to do the wrong thing," says Henrich. Religion helped check bad behaviour.
"If you believe that there is a God watching that will send you to hell for all eternity, then you're less likely to take advantage of somebody."
Henrich says policy-makers and economists need to be more aware that fair play and altruism are powerful forces that motivate people to do things for the public good, such as donate blood, recycle or conserve energy.
"People will give blood freely as an altruistic act," he says. But he notes that blood donations can actually drop when people are paid money to give blood because the cash takes away the "warm glow of altruism."
A front-page New York Times story published on January 10, 2009, included extracts from the Friday sermon (of the day before) at Al-Azhar mosque pronounced by Egyptian-government appointed cleric Sheik Eid Abdel Hamid Youssef. Referencing well-established anti-Semitic motifs from the Koran, Sheikh Youssef intoned:Muslim brothers, God has inflicted the Muslim nation with a people whom God has become angry at [Koran 1:7] and whom he cursed [Koran 5:78] so he made monkeys and pigs [Koran 5:60] out of them. They killed prophets and messengers [Koran 2:61 / 3:112] and sowed corruption on Earth. [Koran 5:33 / 5:64] They are the most evil on Earth. [5:62 /63]At present, the continual, monotonous invocation by Al-Azhar clerics of anti-Semitic motifs from the Koran (and other foundational Muslim texts) is entirely consistent with the published writings and statements of Sheikh Muhammad Sayyid Tantawi — Grand Imam of this preeminent Islamic religious institution from 1996 until his recent passing. Tantawi’s academic magnum opus, Jews in the Koran and the Traditions, a 700-page treatise, elucidates the classical, mainstream theology of Islamic Jew-hatred:[The] Koran describes the Jews with their own particular degenerate characteristics, i.e. killing the prophets of Allah [Koran 2:61/ 3:112], corrupting His words by putting them in the wrong places, consuming the people’s wealth frivolously, refusal to distance themselves from the evil they do, and other ugly characteristics caused by their deep-rooted lasciviousness … only a minority of the Jews keep their word. … [A]ll Jews are not the same. The good ones become Muslims [Koran 3:113], the bad ones do not.Tarek Fatah, other so-called Muslim moderates of his ilk, and their non-Muslim promoters must be compelled to answer the following question: is it "Islamophobia” to quote such statements — rife with Koranic Jew-hatred, and made by authoritative Muslim clerics representing the Vatican of Sunni Islam — or are Mr. Fatah’s reactions, ignoring the existence of these commonplace, normative Islamic proclamations, and vilifying those who bring them to public attention, especially pernicious forms of taqiyya (religiously sanctioned Islamic dissimulation) and Islamic Jew-hatred?
Elaborating on the depth of Muslim hatred for the Jews in his era, Maimonides (in ~ 1172 C.E.) made this profound observation regarding the Jewish predilection for denial, a feature that he insists will hasten their destruction:We have acquiesced, both old and young, to inure ourselves to humiliation. … All this notwithstanding, we do not escape this continued maltreatment [by Muslims] which well nigh crushes us. No matter how much we suffer and elect to remain at peace with them, they stir up strife and sedition.The Jews and their communal leaders like Maimonides living under Islamic rule in the Middle Ages — vanquished by jihad, isolated, and well-nigh defenseless under the repressive system of dhimmitude — can be excused for their silent, submissive denial. There is no such excuse in our era for silently submitting to the threats of disingenuous, hateful Muslim bullies like Tarek Fatah, given the existence of an autonomous Jewish state of Israel and a thriving Western Jewish diaspora, particularly here in the United States, living under the blanket of hard-won protections for their religious freedom, physical security, and dignity.
For what you [Wilders] are really saying is that moderate Muslims cannot be devout Muslims or, in truth, cannot be Muslims at all. What sort of Muslim remains after you have factored out shariah law, effectively compared Muhammed to Hitler, and contended that the Koran should be outlawed, or at least designated as a species of hate literature, as you proposed in your letter to the newspaper De Volkskrant on August 8, 2007?
You now find yourself uncomfortably situated, so to speak, between the devil and the deep Red Sea. Not being a Muslim yourself, you don’t have the option of polemical emphasis that derives from rejecting the faith, becoming an apostate-on-principle or converting to another faith, like Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Ibn Warraq, Wafa Sultan and Nonie Darwish, among others—all of whom took the second part of your logic to its inevitable terminus. They understood that one cannot honestly profess Islam without abiding by the decrees of the religion and its holy book, including the oft-repeated summons to kill or enslave the infidel, the structure of gender apartheid, the imposition of shariah, and a host of other draconian laws.
In other words, a “moderate Muslim” would have to live in a state of contradiction, and perhaps many do—as does, for example, freedom loving Tarek Fatah, Canadian author of Chasing a Mirage: The Tragic Illusion of an Islamic State, who calls himself a “hardened secular Muslim.” What exactly is a secular Muslim, whether hardened or soft? Similarly, what could a “secular Christian” conceivably be other than some sort of mythical chimera? (It is different for Jews, of course; a “secular Jew” remains a Jew because the world persists in regarding him as such. But that is another matter.) Fatah is a good man and an important voice in the ongoing debate concerning Islam, but he cannot extricate himself from a legendary infatuation or acknowledge disagreeable historical and theological facts. One cannot cherry pick the Koran or romanticize Islamic history, as so-called “moderate Muslims” are obliged to do, without falling into incoherence. As a character in Hanif Kureishi’s The Black Album says, “our religion isn’t something you can test out, like trying out a suit to see if it fit! You gotta buy the whole outfit!” There is, to put it another way, no such beverage as Islam Lite. One drinks in the real thing or nothing; there is no substitute.
Bangladeshi author and former Muslim Abul Kasem, in a FrontPage Magazine interview, defines the majority of Muslims as believers “in name only.” Kasem is shockingly direct: the existence of a “moderate Muslim” is contingent upon a moderate Koran “since the life force of Islam is the Qu’ran.” But the Koran happens to be an extreme and violent document, and even if it is selectively ignored by practitioners of the faith, its fissile core can be activated at any time. For Kasem, as for the dissidents mentioned above, the term “moderate Muslim” or “secular Muslim” is an oxymoron. The use of the term “moderate Muslim,” he argues, is “truly misplaced” and muddles Western thinking in the attempt to defeat Islamic terror. I’m presuming this is an argument you too would candidly advance if the sociopolitical context were not so precarious, and if your place in Dutch society and as leader of a respectable political party permitted you to do so.
(Via Phyllis Chesler)
No man is an island,
Entire of itself.
Each is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
[Europe...] is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manner of thine own
Or of thine friend's were.
Each man's death diminishes me,
For I am involved in mankind.
Therefore, send not to know
For whom the [finger calls],
It tolls for thee.
Amnesty International famously advocates on behalf of people persecuted just for expressing an opinion. However, last month the group suspended Gita Sahgal, the head of its gender unit, after she expressed an opinion of her own: that by working with Taliban supporter Moazzam Begg, Amnesty has betrayed its mission to advance human rights. Here is a look at the scandal that the American media — once known for championing whistleblowers — have all but ignored.
Begg, a British citizen, moved to Kabul in 2001, was captured in 2002 on suspicion of al-Qaeda links, and ended up at Guantanamo Bay after admitting that he had attended terror camps and was prepared to fight for the Taliban. Released without charge in 2005, he became the face of Cageprisoners, which implores that Gitmo be closed and displays a disturbing level of sympathy for terrorists, even convicted ones. Begg himself has called the Taliban "better than anything Afghanistan has had" in decades and cited positively jihad theorist Abdullah Azzam.
Begg's troubling past did nothing to dampen Amnesty's eagerness to team up with him; the two collaborated on a recent visit to Downing Street and a European tour urging countries to grant detainees "safe haven." But while Sahgal endorses his views of Guantanamo, she thinks that the partnership is severely misguided, writing to her organization's leaders in a January 30 email:I believe the campaign fundamentally damages Amnesty International's integrity and, more importantly, constitutes a threat to human rights. … To be appearing on platforms with Britain's most famous supporter of the Taliban, whom we treat as a human rights defender, is a gross error of judgment.Hours after she made the contents of the email public on February 7, Amnesty suspended Sahgal. She fired back by slamming the organization for having "created the impression that Begg is not only a victim of human rights violations but a defender of human rights." Care must be taken, she says, in "maintaining an objective distance from groups and ideas that are committed to systematic discrimination and fundamentally undermine the universality of human rights." A leaked memo from a senior Amnesty executive reveals that Sahgal is not alone in such fears.
when 3 young kids (late teens) began taunting them from right beside where I was standing (why are these people always drawn to me???) the rear of the crowd went wild, yelling and screaming and clearly trying to push through the police line and engage with the youngsters. In the end, nobody broke through the police line and the march continued. (Sidenote: These three 'youths' were black and Arab - and had been in the anti-EDL crowds, I had seen them before and they were clearly looking for a fight. Of course the fact that some of the EDL crowd lashed out seemed to be undeniable proof to bystanders that they were racist thugs.) Which brings me to the trouble with the EDL. SMW read their website with regards to this protest, and read the instructions given to member that their signs would be screened and that chanting things like "who the f*ck is allah" were not appropriate, however after watching the EDL for several hours today I am still convinced that it is part of hooligan culture. I do believe that there are a number of people in the EDL who love England, love English culture (real English culture) and who want to preserve it, and who want to ensure that the increasing influence of Islamists in the UK is stopped. But after that they lose me. Many of these men (and there were some women there too) appear to be working class folk who are extremely frustrated with the current situation. who are turning to the EDL as their voice. [Sidenote: Unlike in the past where EDL protestors have worn balaclavas, I did not see a single one today, nor did I see more than a couple of people on either side of the protest who had their face covered with a scarf.]
[...]
The EDL's apparel is pretty familiar to some of the stuff you can for football clubs, they sing variations of football chants (as they did today), and they were also using various gestures today that are commonly used at football matches. What is the problem with this? Well, a little cheer is not a problem but when you are tapping into a culture that is based on street fighting and violence you are likely going to attract hooligans and people who are looking for a good fight. It really takes away from any legitmacy some of your arguments might have.
Once the EDL was stopped at their designated location in front of parliament they did their speeches and then there was basically a back and forth shouting match between a group of EDL and the anti-EDL protestors who remained on the other side of the street. It seemed that alot of people with the EDL were just standing around, while several dozen more louder protestors stood at the front engaging with the other side. They were giving the UK 2 finger salute (which means 'go f*ck yourself') with vigour, and chanting various football chants with modified wording.
[...]
Lately it appears the EDL has been trying to clean up its public image and gain more control of what is going on at EDL events - however until they completely back away from hooligan culture they are going to have a hard time finding anyone to take them seriously. Do I think the EDL gets a fair shake from the media? Absolutely not, but they are not a group I would feel comfortable associating with. Unfortunately as growing numbers of people become frustrated with the situation in the UK, and with no "serious" political party willing to tackle serious issues for fears of being labeled a racist, more people are likely to be picking up EDL signs reading: 'England needs a Geert Wilders.'
Ladies and gentlemen, I believe in another policy, it is time for change. We must make haste. We can't wait any longer. Time is running out. If I may quote one of my favourite American presidents: Ronald Reagan once said: "We need to act today, to preserve tomorrow". That is why I propose the following measures, I only mention a few, in order to preserve our freedom:
First, we will have to defend freedom of speech. It is the most important of our liberties. In Europe and certainly in the Netherlands, we need something like the American First Amendment.
Second, we will have to end and get rid of cultural relativism. To the cultural relativists, the shariah socialists, I proudly say: Our Western culture is far superior to the Islamic culture. Don't be affraid to say it. You are not a racist when you say that our own culture is better.
Third, we will have to stop mass immigration from Islamic countries. Because more Islam means less freedom.
Fourth, we will have to expel criminal immigrants and, following denaturalisation, we will have to expel criminals with a dual nationality. And there are many of them in my country.
Fifth, we will have to forbid the construction of new mosques. There is enough Islam in Europe. Especially since Christians in Turkey, Egypt, Iraq, Iran, Pakistan and Indonesia are mistreated, there should be a mosque building-stop in the West.
And last but not least, we will have to get rid of all those so-called leaders. I said it before: Fewer Chamberlains, more Churchills. Let's elect real leaders.
Yesterday’s local elections in the Netherlands resulted in a victory for the Freedom Party (PVV) of opposition leader Geert Wilders. On June 9th the Dutch will again be called to the voting booths for the general elections. Yesterday’s outcome reinforces the PVV’s momentum, which may result in a political landslide next June with repercussions all over Europe.In other words, Wilders is distinguishing his position from the French model where banning Islamic symbols is seen to require, in the name of equality, banning all other "religious" symbols. In doing so, Wilders is contesting the West's reigning ethos of cultural relativism and our nihilistic outlawing of any and every form of "discrimination". Clearly, Wilders, in insisting on preference for Western traditions, is demanding we wake up to the reality of what our societies are, and discuss what they can and cannot be.
[...]
From the center-right to the center-left Europe’s establishment parties share the consensus that Islamization and EU centralization are inevitable and must be facilitated if the parties want to survive and hold on to power. Wilders, however, is a politician who, in a Buckleyan tradition, “stands athwart history, yelling Stop, at a time when no one is inclined to do so, or to have much patience with those who so urge it.”
On international issues Wilders adopts positions which also go against those of Europe’s ruling political and intellectual establishment. He is an opponent of Turkey’s entry into the EU, an outspoken defender of Israel and an advocate of stronger American-European relations. This makes him unpopular with the media, but it has not harmed him with the electorate.
[...]
Wilders has carefully avoided international contacts with foreign anti-establishment and anti-immigrant parties who have been tarnished by anti-Semitic elements in the past. Wilders regards support for Israel as the litmus test to decide with whom he is willing to cooperate. His only official contacts so far have been with the Danish People’s Party (DF) and the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP).
[...]
Wilders has succeeded in making Islamisation one of the major themes of the coming elections. Ironically, the Dutch authorities have helped him by taking him to court over Fitna. They have accused him of racism and incitement to hatred and discrimination against non-Western ethnic minorities. Although Wilders is an elected member of Parliament, he could be taken to court because the Netherlands, unlike some of its neighboring countries, does not grant politicians immunity from prosecution.
The Public Prosecutor argues that by stating his opinions on Islam, Wilders has “insulted” Muslims. The politician, however, emphasizes that he has never said anything negative about Muslims; he has always carefully restricted his criticism to the ideology of Islam and has done nothing else but state what he honestly sees as the truth. Wilders asked the court for permission to summon 18 expert witnesses in his defense. These include academics, former Muslims, but also Islamist apologists of terrorism. In early February the court brushed aside the request, allowing Wilders to summon only two Dutch academics plus the Syrian born American author and former Muslim Wafa Sultan. Moreover, to prevent the trial from turning into a trial about the nature of Islam – with Islam in the dock rather than Wilders – the court ruled that the three experts will only be heard behind closed doors. Finally, the court decided to postpone the case for a few months.
If the case is reopened before June 9th, it will seriously hamper Wilders’ electoral campaign because he is obliged to attend the court’s sessions. On the other hand, it could gain him the sympathy of additional voters and bring his ideas even more into the foreground as the major theme of the elections.
If the PVV manages to become the largest party in the Netherlands, Dutch Queen Beatrix is expected to ask Wilders to try to form a coalition government, although the Queen is not legally obliged to do so. It is the tradition, however, that the leader of the largest party becomes the nation’s next Prime Minister.
In Almere last week, Wilders announced that one of the first things a PVV led coalition will do is introduce a ban on headscarves for civil servants and for all institutions, foundations or associations that receive municipal subsidies. He added: “For all clarity, this ban does not include crosses or yarmulkes, because those are symbols of religions that belong to our culture and are not – as is the case with headscarves – a sign of an oppressive totalitarian ideology.”
