Showing posts with label netherlands. Show all posts
Showing posts with label netherlands. Show all posts

Monday, February 07, 2011

Dutch White Guilt has another run-around with Geert Wilders

If you ever thought there was something compulsive about the modern left, as if they were trapped in a cultic thinking that just knows it can't be wrong, the Dutch plaintiffs and politicians who seemingly can't let go of their persecution of Geert Wilders, are back in court today to support your intuition, notwithstanding the utter farce of their earlier courtroom miscarriages of justice.

The International Free Press Society - Canada writes:
From the beginning, the plaintiffs were not pleased that the Dutch prosecutors felt the criminal case against Geert Wilders should not proceed. Remarkably, the Court of Appeal chose to ignore the recommendations of the prosecutors and proceed with the trial.

The trial was suspended in October 2010 as it was determined that the Chief Judge had acted in a manner which could be prejudicial. Subsequently, another instance of interference surfaced. In response to this turn of events, yet another Judge inappropriately made public comments about the suspension of the trial.

The zeal and determination with which the court is pursuing Geert Wilders even in the face of so many opportunities to put a halt to this farce, bespeaks the application of a kind of law that is foreign to western principles of justice. We should all be alarmed that Shariah law appears to have taken hold in our courtrooms and in the social fabric of western nations against the wishes and unbeknownst to the majority of citizens.

It is imperative that the citizens of free nations fully understand the implications of the actions of unelected officials in courtrooms across the Western world and stand with Geert Wilders and other victims of the Thought Police and reject this stealth movement towards removing our fundamental liberties.
Geert Wilders Speech at court in Amsterdam today :: IFPS-Canada

The IFPS then provides us with an English text of Wilders' speech today at the Amsterdam court:
The lights are going out all over Europe. All over the continent where our culture flourished and where man created freedom, prosperity and civilization. Everywhere the foundation of the West is under attack.

All over Europe the elites are acting as the protectors of an ideology that has been bent on destroying us since the fourteenth century. An ideology that has sprung from the desert and that can produce only deserts because it does not give people freedom. The Islamic Mozart, the Islamic Gerard Reve [a Dutch author], the Islamic Bill Gates; they do not exist because without freedom there is no creativity. The ideology of Islam is especially noted for killing and oppression and can only produce societies that are backward and impoverished. Surprisingly, the elites do not want to hear any criticism of this ideology.

My trial is not an isolated incident. Only fools believe it is. All over Europe multicultural elites are waging total war against their populations. Their goal is to continue the strategy of mass-immigration, which will ultimately result in an islamic Europe – a Europe without freedom: Eurabia.

The lights are going out all over Europe. Anyone who thinks or speaks individually is at risk. Freedom loving citizens who criticize islam, or even merely suggest that there is a relationship between islam and crime or honour killing, must suffer and are threatened or criminalized. Those who speak the truth are in danger.

The lights are going out all over Europe. Everywhere the Orwellian thought police are at work, on the lookout for thought crimes everywhere, casting the populace back within the confines where it is allowed to think.

This trial is not about me. It is about something much greater. Freedom of speech is not the property of those who happen to belong to the elites of a country. It is an inalienable right, the birthright of our people. For centuries battles have been fought for it, and now it is being sacrificed to please a totalitarian ideology.

Future generations will look back at this trial and wonder who was right. Who defended freedom and who wanted to get rid of it.

The lights are going out all over Europe. Our freedom is being restricted everywhere, so I repeat what I said here last year:

It is not only the privilege, but also the duty of free people – and hence also my duty as a member of the Dutch Parliament – to speak out against any ideology that threatens freedom. Hence it is a right and a duty to speak the truth about the evil ideology that is called islam. I hope that freedom of speech will emerge triumphant from this trial. I hope not only that I shall be acquitted, but especially that freedom of speech will continue to exist in the Netherlands and in Europe.
But why do the "multicultural elites" need to persecute Wilders and his free speech and contribute generally to the suicide of freedom, the suicide of the ongoing creativity that defines the West in comparison to pretty much any other, relatively unfree, civilizational order? Why has the left become a cult of control freaks?

We will perhaps find our answer in a debate over the nature of White Guilt. In this debate, I agree with Adam Katz that White Guilt is ultimately the fear of what we will become (mass murderers) if we refuse the blackmail of those who threaten us with terrorism or totalitarian law (essentially, the Sharia), e.g. with demands for expansion of the Islamic culture and state. This is why, to counter the underlying fear of our cultic left, the defenders of freedom must become much more active in thinking about how our freedom and any reformed immigration policy need not entail a genocidal threat to the "third-world" that is full of resentment at being, in the present world order, marginalized economic and political losers whose culture is not readily-suited to productivity in a now single global marketplace.

Can that resentment be mediated, can it be turned into productive energy, with anything less than a step-by-step liberalization of the cultures of the present outcasts? And do we have the courage, and humility, to help lead that process? Or will we commit suicide? Or will we try to put up a wall around those who hate us and want to kill us, thinking that we will only have to keep them in check with occasional military strikes, and that a heavy hand will diminish and not increase their fury to destroy us, so that the situation will never escalate into the possibility that drives White Guilt: the possibility that we will wipe them out in some fury of escalating rivalry?

White Guilt seeks the suicide of the West so that we need never face that day when we lose all trust and faith in the civilizing mission of Western Judeo-Greco-Christian culture. White Guilt has already imagined that day and lost faith. And that's why Wilders, according to the guilty, must be ceaselessly pursued. While I detest their faithlessness, I think the white guilty do have one real insight: the likelihood that genocide will emerge from any strategy to lock up and contain the resentful, unfree populations of the third world. I don't see this as an argument not to fight the Islamization (Shariafication) of Europe, or at least parts of it, by changing immigration, among other, policies. But maybe that's a topic for the comments section, if anyone wants to take it up.

Thursday, October 07, 2010

Geert Wilders' speech in Berlin - The kind of talk Europe's totalitarian elites want to ban

Geert Wilders Berlin Oct 2 English titles from Vlad Tepes on Vimeo.



Transcript:

00:00 On Monday October 4th, 2010, in a court in Amsterdam,
00:03 Geert Wilders was put on trial for his freedom.
00:06 Two days before, on the eve of the anniversary of German reunification,
00:08 an event was held in Berlin, by yet another European political party established to preserve
00:13 the traditions of European liberty and to oppose the Islamification of the continent.
00:16 There Mr Wilders delivered the following speech,
00:18 again giving voice to the opinions that the European establishment,
00:22 would like to see him thrown in jail, for having the courage to express.
00:26 Dear... Dear Friends, I find myself very happy to be here in Berlin today.
00:35 As you know, the invitation which my friend René Stadtkewitz extended to me,
00:41 has cost him his membership of the CDU group in the Berlin Parliament.
00:47 René, however, did not give in to the pressure.
01:01 He did not betray his convictions.
01:05 His dismissal prompted him to establish his own new political party.
01:12 And René, I thank you for your invitation, and I wish you all the best:
01:19 and I also wish you a great great deal of success with your new party.
01:38 My friends as you may have heard, the past weeks have been rather busy for me.
01:46 Earlier this week we succeeded in forging in The Netherlands,
01:49 a minority government of the Liberals and the Christian-Democrats,
01:55 which will be supported by my own party.
01:59 And this is an historic event for the Netherlands.
02:05 I am very proud of having been able to help achieve this.
02:11 And at this...
02:22 At this very moment, while we are here,
02:25 the Christian-Democrat Party conference is deciding
02:29 whether or not to approve this coalition.
02:33 And if they do...
02:35 If they do, we will finally be able to start to rebuild our country.
02:41 To be able to preserve our national identity,
02:44 and offer our children a better future.
02:48 Despite...
02:57 And despite my busy schedule,
03:00 it has always been a wish of mine, to come to Berlin.
03:04 Because Germany too needs a political movement,
03:08 which is both willing to defend German identity,
03:11 and to stand up against the Islamification of Germany.
03:32 Your Chancellor Angela Merkel says that,
03:35 “The Islamization of Germany is inevitable.”
03:39 She has called upon citizens to be prepared
03:42 for more changes as a result of immigration.
03:46 She wants the Germans to adapt to this situation.
03:51 The Christian-Democrat leader has said, and accepts that, quote:
03:57 “More than before mosques will be an integral part of our cities.” Unquote.
04:06 My friends...
04:08 My friends, we should not, and we will not
04:11 accept the unacceptable as inevitable:
04:16 Without trying to turn the tide!
04:31 It is our duty as politicians to preserve our nations for our children.
04:37 And I hope that René’s new movement
04:40 will be as successful as my own Partij voor de Vrijheid,
04:45 as Oskar Freysinger’s Schweizerische Volkspartei [in Switzerland],
04:49 and as Pia Kjaersgaard’s Dansk Folkeparti in Denmark,
04:53 and similar movements elsewhere.
05:06 My good friend Pia Kjaersgaard recently spoke in Sweden,
05:11 at the invitation of the Sverigedemokraterna.
05:15 She said: “I have not come to meddle in Swedish domestic politics.
05:21 Because that is for the Swedish people to be concerned with.
05:24 “No,” she said, “I have come because
05:28 in spite of certain differences today's Swedish debate, in many ways
05:33 reminds me of the debate we've had in Denmark for 10-15 years.
05:40 And I have to come to Sweden because it is also a concern to Denmark.
05:45 We cannot just sit on our hands
05:49 and be silent witnesses to political developments in Sweden.”
05:52 And the same, the very same, applies for me
05:57 as a Dutchman with respect to Germany.
06:00 I am here...
06:12 I am here today because Germany matters to the Netherlands,
06:18 and to the rest of the world;
06:21 and because we cannot, in the absence of a strong German partner,
06:25 establish an International Freedom Alliance.
06:38 Dear friends, tomorrow is the Day of German Unity.
06:43 Tomorrow exactly twenty years ago, your great nation was reunified
06:50 after the collapse of the totalitarian Communist ideology.
06:55 The Day of German Unity is an important day for the whole of Europe.
07:01 Germany...
07:09 Germany is the largest democracy in Europe.
07:15 Germany is Europe’s economic powerhouse.
07:18 The wellbeing and prosperity of Germany is of benefit to all of us.
07:24 Because the wellbeing and prosperity of Germany,
07:27 is a prerequisite for the wellbeing and prosperity of Europe.
07:39 Today I am here, however, to warn you about a looming disunity.
07:45 Germany’s national identity, its democracy and economic prosperity,
07:51 is under threat from the political ideology of Islam.
08:00 In 1848, Karl Marx began his Communist Manifesto with the famous words:
08:08 “A spectre is haunting Europe - the spectre of communism.”
08:14 But Today...
08:16 Today, there is a different spectre stretching across Europe:
08:20 It is the spectre of Islam.
08:24 This danger...
08:34 And this danger, is a political one today also.
08:39 Islam is not merely a religion, as many people seem to think:
08:44 Islam is mainly a dangerous political ideology.
09:01 The Flemish Professor Urbain Vermeulen, the former president
09:06 of the European Union of Arabists and Islamicists, points out that,
09:10 “Islam is primarily a legal system: a law,” rather than a religion.
09:19 I quote from the bestseller and BBC television series: The Triumph of the West,
09:26 which the renowned Oxford historian J.M. Roberts wrote in 1985.
09:32 And he wrote that,
09:34 “Although we carelessly speak of Islam as a ‘religion’;
09:38 that word carries many overtones of the special history of western Europe.
09:45 The Muslim is primarily a member of a community,
09:49 the follower of a certain way, an adherent to a system of law.
09:56 Rather than someone holding particular theological views.”
10:02 And the American political scientist Mark Alexander writes that,
10:07 “One of our greatest mistakes is to think of Islam
10:12 as just another one of the world’s great religions.
10:18 We should not do so.”
10:29 “Islam,” he says, “is politics or it is nothing at all.
10:34 But of course, it is politics with a spiritual dimension...
10:39 ...which will stop at nothing, until the West is no more.
10:44 Until the West has... been well and truly Islamized.”
10:49 And, he was right. These...
10:56 These are not all just statements by opponents of Islam.
10:59 Islamic scholars say, and think, the same thing.
11:03 To anyone who has read the Koran, the Sirah and the Hadith:
11:09 there can be no misunderstanding about the nature of Islam.
11:15 Abul Ala Maududi, the influential 20th century Pakistani Islamic thinker, wrote,
11:24 – and I quote, emphasizing that these are not my words but those of a leading Islamic scholar –
11:31 he said: “Islam is not merely a religious creed [but] a revolutionary ideology,
11:39 and jihad refers to that revolutionary struggle...
11:44 to destroy all states and governments anywhere, on the face of the earth,
11:50 which are opposed to the ideology and program of Islam.”
11:55 And Ali Sina, an Iranian Islamic apostate who now lives in Canada,
12:02 points out that there is one golden rule,
12:06 and that this golden rule lies at the heart of every religion:
12:12 that is, that we do unto others, as we would have them do unto us.
12:19 But in Islam, this rule only applies to fellow believers, but not to Infidels.
12:39 Ali Sina says, and I quote,
12:42 “The reason I am against Islam is not because it is a religion,
12:47 but because it is a political ideology of imperialism and domination,
12:53 in the guise of religion.
12:55 Because Islam does not follow the Golden Rule, it attracts violent people.”
13:03 A dispassionate study of the beginnings of Islamic history,
13:07 reveals clearly that Muhammad’s objective was
13:11 first to conquer his own people, the Arabs, and to unify them under his rule,
13:19 and then to conquer and rule the world.
13:23 That was the original cause.
13:26 It was obviously political and was backed by military force.
13:32 “I was ordered to fight all men until they say, ‘There is no god but Allah’, ”
13:41 is what Muhammad said in his final address.
13:44 He did so in accordance with the Koranic command in sura 8:39:
13:50 “Fight them until there is no more dissension and the religion is entirely Allah’s.”
14:00 According to mythology, Muhammad founded Islam in Mecca,
14:05 after the Angel Gabriel visited him for the first time in the year 610.
14:11 However, for its first twelve years, when Islam was religious rather than political,
14:18 Islam was not a success.
14:20 But in 622, Muhammad emigrated with his small band of 150 followers, to Yathrib,
14:29 which was then a predominantly Jewish oasis.
14:32 There he established the first mosque in history, and seized political power,
14:39 he gave Yathrib the name of Medina (which means the “City of the Prophet”);
14:44 and began his career as a military and a political leader,
14:49 who conquered the whole of Arabia.
14:52 Tellingly, the Islamic calendar starts with the hijra,
14:58 the migration to Medina:
15:01 the moment when Islam became a political movement.
15:07 And after Muhammad's death, Islam developed,
15:11 based upon his own words and deeds: Sharia.
15:14 An elaborate legal system which justified,
15:17 the repressive governance of the world by divine right
15:22 – including rules for jihad,
15:25 and for the absolute control of believers and non-believers.
15:30 And Sharia as you all know,
15:32 is the law of Saudi Arabia and Iran, among other Islamic states.
15:38 It is also central to the Organization of the Islamic Conference,
15:44 which in article 24 of its Cairo Declaration of Human Rights in Islam,
15:50 proclaims that, “all rights and freedoms are subject to the Islamic Sharia.”
15:58 And the OIC is no religious institution; it is a political body.
16:06 It constitutes the largest voting-block in the United Nations,
16:11 and writes reports on so-called “Islamophobia” in Western Countries,
16:17 which accuse us of human rights violations.
16:22 To speak in biblical terms: They look for the splinter in our eye,
16:29 while ignoring the log in their own.
16:48 Under Sharia law, people in territories conquered by Islam,
16:53 have no guaranteed legal rights,
16:56 not even the right to life or the right to own property,
17:00 unless they convert to Islam.
17:04 Before I continue,
17:07 and in order to avoid any misunderstandings,
17:10 I want to emphasize that I am talking about Islam,
17:15 not about Muslims.
17:17 I always make a clear distinction
17:20 between the people and the ideology,
17:23 between Muslims and Islam.
17:27 There are many moderate Muslims,
17:31 but the political ideology of Islam is not moderate,
17:37 will never be moderate, and has global ambitions.
17:53 It aims to impose Islamic law, or Sharia, upon the whole world.
17:59 The way to achieve this is through jihad.
18:03 The good news is,
18:05 that millions of Muslims around the world,
18:08 – including many in Germany and the Netherlands –
18:11 do not follow the directives of Sharia,
18:14 let alone engage in jihad.
18:17 But the bad news...
18:19 The bad news however, is that those who do follow them,
18:25 are prepared to use all available means
18:28 in order to achieve their ideological, revolutionary goal.
18:34 In 1954 the British-American writer and historian Professor Bernard Lewis,
18:42 in his essay Communism and Islam, spoke of,
18:46 “the totalitarianism, of the Islamic political tradition.”
18:51 Professor Lewis said that,
18:54 “The traditional Islamic division of the world
18:58 into the ‘House of Islam’ and the ‘House of War’...
19:01 ...has obvious parallels in the Communist view of world affairs...
19:06 ...The aggressive fanaticism of the believer is the same.”
19:12 says Professor Lewis.
19:14 And the American political scientist Mark Alexander states,
19:19 that the nature of Islam, differs very little
19:22 – and only in detail rather than style –
19:25 from despicable and totalitarian political ideologies,
19:29 such as National-Socialism and Communism.
19:34 He lists the following common characteristics for these three,
19:39 these three, ideologies:
19:42 Communism, National-Socialism and Islam.
19:45 First: They use political purges to “cleanse” society of what they consider undesirable.
19:56 Second: They tolerate only a single political party,
20:01 where Islam allows more parties, it insists that all parties be Islamic ones.
20:09 Third: They coerce the people down a road that they must follow.
20:16 Fourth: They obliterate the liberal distinction between areas of private judgment and of public control.
20:27 Fifth: They turn the educational system into an apparatus for the purpose of universal indoctrination.
20:35 Sixth: They lay down rules for art, for literature, for science and for religion.
20:44 Seventh: They subdue certain people who are given second-class status.
20:53 Eighth: They induce a frame of mind akin to fanaticism,
20:58 adjustment takes place by struggle and dominance.
21:03 Ninth: They are abusive to their opponents, and regard any concession on their own part,
21:10 as a temporary expedient, and on a rival’s part, as a sign of weakness.
21:19 Tenth: They regard politics as an expression of power.
21:24 Lastly: They are anti-Semitic.
21:29 There is one more striking parallel,
21:33 but this is not a characteristic of the three political ideologies,
21:40 but rather it is a characteristic of the West:
21:43 It is the apparent inability of the West to see the danger.
21:50 The prerequisite to understanding political danger:
21:53 is a willingness to see the truth, even if it is unpleasant.
22:14 Unfortunately, modern Western politicians seem to have lost this capacity.
22:22 Our inability leads us to reject, the logical and historical conclusions,
22:28 to be drawn from the facts.
22:32 Though we could, and should know better.
22:36 What is wrong with modern Western man,
22:40 that we end up making the same mistake over and over again?
22:45 There is no better place to ponder this question,
22:52 than here in Berlin.
23:07 Here in Berlin, the former capital of the empire,
23:11 of the evil that was Nazi Germany.
23:14 And a city which was held captive by the
23:17 so-called German “Democratic” Republic for over forty years.
23:22 When the citizens of Eastern Europe rejected Communism in 1989,
23:30 they were inspired by dissidents such as Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn,
23:35 Václav Havel, Vladimir Bukovsky, and others, who told them:
23:39 that people have a right,
23:41 but also an obligation, to “live within the truth.”
23:46 And freedom, dear friends...
23:49 Freedom requires eternal vigilance;
23:53 so it is with truth also.
24:08 So it is too with truth.
24:10 Solzhenitsyn added however, and I quote, that,
24:14 “The truth is seldom sweet. It is almost invariably bitter.”
24:21 Let us, let us together, look the bitter truth squarely in the eye:
24:27 We have lost our capacity to perceive the danger,
24:32 and to understand the truth,
24:34 because we no longer value freedom.
24:38 Politicians from almost all establishment political parties today,
24:41 are facilitating Islamization.
24:44 They are cheering for every new Islamic school,
24:47 every Islamic bank, and every new Islamic court.
24:52 They regard Islam as being equal to our own culture.
24:57 Islam or Freedom?
24:59 It doesn't really matter to them.
25:03 But to us? To us? It does matter.
25:18 The entire establishment, the elite
25:21 – universities, churches, trade unions, the media, politicians –
25:27 are all putting our hard-earned liberties at risk.
25:32 They talk...
25:39 They talk about equality,
25:42 but amazingly fail to see how in Islam,
25:47 women have fewer rights than men,
25:49 and infidels have fewer rights than adherents of Islam.
26:01 Are we, then, going to repeat the fatal mistakes of the Weimar Republic?
26:20 Are we succumbing to Islam because our commitment to freedom is already dead?
26:26 No. It will not happen.
26:30 We are not like Frau Merkel.
26:32 We will not accept Islamization.
26:55 We have to keep our freedom alive.
26:59 And, to the extent that we have already lost it,
27:01 we must reclaim it in our democratic elections.
27:16 This is exactly why, precisely why,
27:19 we need new political parties that defend freedom.
27:30 It is to support such parties that we established the International Freedom Alliance.
27:40 As you know, I am standing trial in the Netherlands.
27:46 On Monday, in two days time, I will have to go to court again.
27:50 And I will have to spend most of the coming month there.
27:55 I have been brought to court because of my opinions on Islam,
28:01 and because I have voiced these opinions in speeches,
28:07 articles and in my documentary film Fitna.
28:11 I have personally lived under constant police protection for years.
28:16 Islamic extremists want to assassinate me,
28:19 yet it is I who stand before a court,
28:22 because the Dutch establishment – most of them non-Muslims –
28:28 want to see me silenced as well.
28:32 I have been dragged to court because in my country,
28:36 freedom can no longer be fully enjoyed.
28:42 Unlike America, we do not have a First Amendment which guarantees people
28:49 the human right to express their opinions,
28:54 and foster public debate by doing so.
28:57 And in contrast to America, in Europe, the nation state,
29:02 and increasingly the European Union also,
29:05 prescribes how citizens
29:07 – including democratically elected politicians such as myself –
29:11 how we should think, and what we are allowed to say.
29:26 One of the things we are no longer allowed to say,
29:31 is that our culture, our culture, is superior to certain other cultures.
29:39 This...
29:48 Saying only this, is seen as a discriminatory statement
29:55 – a statement of hatred even.
29:58 We are indoctrinated on a daily basis, in the schools and through the media,
30:02 with the message that all cultures are equal,
30:06 but that, if one culture is worse than all the rest,
30:09 then it is our own.
30:14 We are inundated with feelings of guilt and shame
30:18 about our own identity and what we stand for.
30:25 We are exhorted to extend respect to everyone and everything,
30:29 except ourselves.
30:31 This...
30:46 This is the message of the Left and of the politically-correct ruling establishment.
30:54 They want us to feel so ashamed about our own identity,
31:01 that we simply refuse to stand up for it.
31:05 The detrimental obsession of our cultural and political elites with Western guilt,
31:13 merely reinforces the view which Islam has of us.
31:17 The Koran says that non-Muslims are kuffar [the plural of kafir],
31:21 a word which literally means “rejectors” or “ingrates”.
31:26 Hence non-believers, are “guilty”.
31:30 Islam teaches that in our natural state we have all been born as believers.
31:36 Islam teaches that if we are not believers today, the fault for this thus lies with us,
31:41 or the fault lies with our forefathers.
31:45 Subsequently, we are always kafir – guilty – because either we or our fathers are apostates.
31:53 And hence, according to some, we deserve subjugation.
31:57 And our contemporary leftist and politically-correct intellectuals,
32:02 are entirely blind to the dangers of Islam.
32:07 Former Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovsky argues that the West,
32:13 after the fall of Communism,
32:15 failed to expose those who had collaborated with the Communists.
32:21 By for example purposefully advocating policies of détente and improved relations,
32:27 or a relaxation of international tension, and peaceful coexistence.
32:33 He points out that the Cold War was, “a war we never won.”
32:41 “We never even fought it… Most of the time, the West engaged in
32:47 a policy of appeasement toward the Soviet bloc
32:53 – and appeasers don’t win any wars.”
33:06 Dear friends... Islam is the Communism of today.
33:12 But...
33:17 But, because of our failure to come clean with Communism,
33:23 we are unable to deal with Islam,
33:26 trapped as we are in the old Communist habit of deceit and double-speak;
33:33 which in the past plagued the countries in the East, and that now plagues us all.
33:39 So we see the sort of people, who before turned a blind eye to Communism,
33:46 are precisely the same politically-correct, leftists, who today close their eyes to Islam.
34:03 They are using exactly the same arguments
34:07 for “improved relations”, and appeasement as before.
34:13 They argue that our adversary is just as peace-loving, as we are,
34:20 that if only we were to meet him half-way, then he would also do the same.
34:26 That he only asks for respect, and that if we respect him, he will in turn respect us.
34:34 We even hear a repetition of the old moral equivalence mantra.
34:40 They used to say that Western “imperialism” was as bad as Soviet imperialism;
34:49 today they say that Western “imperialism” is just as bad as Islamic terrorism.
34:57 In my speech a few weeks ago in New York, on September 11th,
35:02 I emphasized that we must stop this “Blame the West, Blame America”-game,
35:09 which Islamic spokesmen are playing with us.
35:27 And we must stop playing this game ourselves.
35:32 And I have exactly the same message, dear friends, for you today.
35:39 It is an insult to tell us that we are guilty,
35:44 and deserve what is happening to us.
35:47 How is it exactly, that we deserve becoming strangers in our own lands?
35:53 We should accept such insults no longer.
36:12 First of all, Western civilization is the freest and most prosperous on earth.
36:21 Which is precisely why so many immigrants are so keen on moving here.
36:24 Secondly...
36:29 Secondly, there is no such thing as collective guilt.
36:33 Free individuals...
36:41 Free individuals are free moral agents who are only responsible for their own deeds.
36:51 I am very happy, very fortunate, to be here in Berlin today in order to deliver this message,
37:00 which is extremely important, especially so, here in Germany.
37:05 Whatever...
37:07 No matter what took place in your country in the past,
37:13 the present generation is not responsible for it.
37:34 Whatever happened in the past, is no excuse for punishing the Germans of today.
37:49 But... But, neither is it an excuse, for you to shrink from the fight for your own identity.
38:10 Your only responsibility is to eschew the mistakes of the past.
38:16 It is your duty to stand with those threatened by the ideology of Islam,
38:24 such as the State of Israel and your Jewish compatriots.
38:41 The Weimar Republic refused to fight for freedom,
38:46 and was overrun by a totalitarian ideology,
38:50 with catastrophic consequences for Germany, the rest of Europe and the world.
38:56 Please do not refuse to fight, for your freedom, today.
39:14 I feel lucky to be in your midst today because it seems,
39:18 that twenty years after German reunification, a new,
39:23 a new generation no longer feels guilty, just for the fact of being German.
39:41 The current and very intense debate about Thilo Sarrazin’s recent book,
39:48 is an indication of the fact that Germany is coming to terms with itself.
39:53 I have...
40:01 I have not yet read Dr Sarrazin’s book, but I say this:
40:05 While the minds of the ruling politically-correct establishment
40:09 may be closed to, and almost unanimously critical of his thesis,
40:12 and while he may have lost his job as a Bundesbanker,
40:16 nevertheless, a large majority of Germans acknowledge that Dr Sarrazin
40:21 has addressed an important and pressing issue.
40:35 “Germany is abolishing itself,” warns Sarrazin,
40:40 and he calls upon the Germans to halt this process.
40:44 The enormous impact of his book indicates that many Germans feel the same way.
40:50 The people of Germany, do not want Germany to be abolished.
40:54 Despite all...
41:04 Germany is no longer ashamed to assert its national pride.
41:18 In these difficult times, when our national identities are under threat,
41:23 we must stop feeling guilty about who we are.
41:26 And with that cease feeling shameful,
41:29 and say together who we are:
41:31 We are not kafir, we are not “guilty”.
41:48 Like other peoples, Germans too have the right to remain who they are.
41:53 Germans must not become French, nor Dutch, nor Americans, nor Turks.
42:00 They should remain Germans.
42:10 When the Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan visited your country in 2008,
42:17 he told the Turks living here that they had to remain Turks.
42:23 He literally said that, “assimilation is a crime against humanity.”
42:28 And Erdogan would perhaps have been right,
42:32 if he had been addressing the Turks in Turkey.
42:47 However, Germany is still the land of the Germans.
42:52 And hence, the Germans have a right to demand that anyone
42:56 who comes to live in Germany should assimilate.
43:00 They have the right...
43:07 They have the right
43:09 – no, they have the duty to demand, for the sake of their children –
43:17 to demand that newcomers respect German identity,
43:21 and fully respect Germany’s right to preserve its identity.
43:25 And we must realize...
43:29 We must realize that Islam expands in two ways.
43:35 Since it is not a religion, conversion is only a marginal phenomenon.
43:41 Historically, Islam has expanded either by military conquest,
43:48 or, it has expanded by using the weapon of hijra: immigration.
43:55 Muhammad conquered Medina through immigration.
43:59 Hijra is also what we are experiencing today.
44:03 The Islamization of Europe continues all the time.
44:09 But the West, our West, has no strategy for dealing with the Islamic ideology:
44:17 because our elites say to us, that we must adapt to them,
44:22 rather than the exact opposite.
44:35 In this regard, there is a lesson which we can learn from America,
44:41 the freest nation on Earth.
44:43 Americans are proud of their nation, its achievements and its flag.
44:50 We, too, should be proud of our nations.
44:55 The United States has always been a nation of immigrants.
44:59 And President Theodore Roosevelt was very clear about the duty of immigrants.
45:07 Here is what President Roosevelt said, and I quote:
45:12 “We should insist that if the immigrant who comes here in good faith,
45:19 becomes an American and assimilates himself to us,
45:22 he shall be treated with a full and exact equality with everyone else...
45:29 But this is predicated upon the man’s becoming in very fact an American,
45:35 and nothing but an American...
45:38 There can be no divided allegiance here...
45:43 We have room for but one sole loyalty
45:47 and that is a loyalty to the American people.”
45:52 Endquote.
46:05 And it is not up to me to define what Germany’s national identity consists of.
46:13 That is entirely up to you.
46:16 However I do know, that German culture,
46:19 like that of neighbouring countries such as my own,
46:24 is rooted in Judeo-Christian and humanist values, and not in Islam.
46:43 Every responsible politician has a political obligation:
46:48 to preserve these values against ideologies which directly threaten them.
46:55 And a Germany...
46:56 A Germany full of mosques and veiled women,
47:00 is no longer, my friends,
47:02 it is no longer the Germany of Goethe,
47:05 of Schiller and Heine,
47:06 of Bach and Mendelssohn.
47:28 It will be a loss to us all.
47:32 It is vital that you cherish and preserve your roots as a nation.
47:38 Otherwise it will be impossible for you to safeguard your identity:
47:43 you will be abolished as a people, and you will lose your freedom.
47:49 And the rest of Europe will lose its freedom with you.
47:55 My friends, when Ronald Reagan came to a divided Berlin 23 years ago,
48:04 he uttered, not far from here at the Brandenburg Gate,
48:09 the following historic words, to the Soviet General Secretary:
48:20 “Mister Gorbachev, tear down this wall.”
48:25 President Reagan was not an appeaser,
48:29 he was rather, a man who spoke the truth, and who loved freedom.
48:34 Today, we must again tear down a wall.
48:40 It is not a wall of concrete,
48:43 but rather it is a wall of denial and ignorance, about the real nature of Islam.
48:50 The International Freedom Alliance aims to coordinate and stimulate these efforts.
48:59 And because we speak the truth – and it is the truth – voters have given my party,
49:05 and many other parties too, from Denmark all the way to Switzerland,
49:09 the voters have given us the power to influence the political decision-making process.
49:15 Whether that be in opposition, or through supporting a minority government;
49:21 as we too want to do soon in the Netherlands.
49:26 President Reagan... President Reagan showed, that one can, by speaking the truth,
49:33 one can change the course of history.
49:37 He showed...
49:47 He showed also, that there is no need to despair.
49:52 Never!
49:55 My friends... Just do your duty.
50:00 Do not be afraid.
50:03 Speak up. Speak the truth.
50:06 Defend Freedom.
50:08 Together we can preserve freedom,
50:12 together we must preserve freedom,
50:14 and together, my friends, we will be able to preserve freedom.
50:19 Thank you.

VIA Gates of Vienna: Islam or Freedom?

Thursday, June 10, 2010

Congratulations Geert Wilders

The consensus in the reports I am reading is that Geert Wilders and the Freedom Party, while coming in third in the Dutch elections, must still be considered the big winners as they have almost tripled their representation in Parliament. It seems that the Dutch will either have a dubious alliance of (somewhat) free market/fiscally conservative and socialist parties aimed at keeping Wilders' party out of government, thus no doubt only highlighting the issues for which Gilders is persona non grata in the salons of the moribund EU elite, or he will be brought into government and Dutch politicians will attempt to hash out the kind of compromises  that may become viable in future in a poorer, more EUrosceptic, Europe, or the Dutch will soon be returning to the voting booths.

Dutch electorate votes right-wing and populist | Radio Netherlands Worldwide
The conservative VVD has won its first parliamentary election ever, but Geert Wilders and his populist Freedom Party (PVV) are seen as the real winners of these elections. The Islam-bashing party nearly trebled its seats. What do the Dutch see in the populist Geert Wilders?

'Fellow party members, bring along a battering ram, because tomorrow we are going to break down the doors”. With this admonition Geert Wilders marked his party’s election victory. The one-and-a-half million voters who cast their ballots for the man and his relentless crusade against ‘mass immigration’ and the ‘Islamisation of the Netherlands also celebrated his victory. The Freedom Party has nearly trebled in size compared to the 2006 elections, and is now the third largest after the conservative VVD and the social democratic PvdA.

Jeering
When PvdA leader Job Cohen at a party meeting in Amsterdam congratulated Geert Wilders and his PVV on their major election victory, his remark was greeted with loud jeering. However, the former Amsterdam mayor rebuked his supporters, saying: ”I don’t want to hear any jeering, the PVV has won a major victory and we should respect that”. All established parties have since congratulated Wilders, and much of the criticism has died down now that one in six Dutch voters cast their ballots for the populist party.

The much-vaunted Dutch ‘polder model’, i.e. the system of ensuring economic prosperity and political stability by seeking broad political consensus on major issues, is unlikely to provide an answer to the current situation. The major parties are deeply divided on how to fight the economic crisis and how to address the thorny issues of immigration and Islam. And the election has failed to provide a clear winner with a strong mandate to form a coalition.

Tuesday, May 04, 2010

Now's the time to donate if you want to defend free speech and resist the Islamization of Europe

Blazing Cat Fur: Urgent: Geert Wilders Needs Our Help ("he is not accepting Government funding and needs some dough to put him over the top, 10,000 wee folks makin wee donations can do that in a hurry"):
With four weeks to go before the general elections in the Netherlands, Geert Wilders and the Party for Freedom are now engaged in a life-and-death struggle against the forces of jihad. In the last couple of years Geert Wilders has emerged as the international symbol of the struggle against Islam.

The Party for Freedom (PVV) refuses government subsidy in order to remain independent. All other Dutch parties receive government money. Therefore, the PVV is facing a serious challenge in order to survive this election season. Dutch state television is engaged in a massive campaign to smear the PVV.

The Party for Freedom needs your help urgently. Every donation is welcome.

There is a Paypal button on the English-language site: www.geertwilders.nl

...
ING bank account of the Stichting Vrienden van de PVV in The Hague: 67.04.72.344

(IBAN: NL98 INGB 0670 4723 44, BIC: INGBNL2A)

Postal address:
Postbus 20018
2500 EA Den Haag

There is a Paypal button on the English-language site: www.geertwilders.nl

Thursday, March 04, 2010

The Bicyclists and the Jews


The Wilders Momentum | The Brussels Journal:
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.
[...]
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.”
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.

There is no future in trying to be all things to all people. The future is built by people signifying difference, taking stands in which others can then find things to exchange. But that doesn't mean we don't have to try to maximize the freedom for people to turn away their resentments and to realize what is possible in our societies, the freedom for new forms of exchange that will genuinely strengthen, not weaken, the foundational order of our socieities. At this point, the debate rightly turns us away from metaphysical abstractions and towards consideration of the actual course of events in our socieities. Are events unfolding in ways that promise some shared understanding of differences going forward, so that we can find useful and meaningful and relatively non-violent ways of trading in our differences and building a freer order? Or do present events, or the lack of events being allowed to unfold, only promise a loss of our ability to engage with those around us?

It is for the (Dutch) electorate to know the answers, to insist that their common sense understanding of what is going on supersede any intellectual's or any bureaucratic elite's attempt at capturing the world in some formula. What is essential is that we have politicians who attempt to represent the various possibilities. It is a great evil that one part of the Dutch or European political class is trying to outlaw the speech of Wilders and his party. This is the kind of event that should well lead voters to doubt the current regime.

Wilders' dictum that support for Israel is his litmus test in choosing allies is also a sign that he realizes that the events by which we build free socieities require some people to inhabit the position of harbinger, like those who were once suspected as social misfits for eschewing horses and the pedestrian pace of life in favour of the bicycle. Have you ever tried to ride a Dutch bicycle? How they ever became a nation of riders I do not know.

Wednesday, February 03, 2010

Geert Who?

The news out of the Geert Wilders show trial today is that the Dutch court is refusing to hear but three of the eighteen witnesses Wilders had wished to call.

What is one to make of this but that it shows an obvious desire on the part of the judges to keep things as quiet and short as possible. Once again we see that the "liberal" elites ruling the West simply cannot both defend their dogmatic positions on multiculturalism and "hate speech" without trying to shut up people who point out some of the deep problems with their ideology. And no problem is greater than the question of whether Islam, as it exists today in Europe, is compatible with European liberal democracy.

Diana West notes that it is not just the Dutch judges who don't want to hear too much about Islam, it is also the global media. One might have thought that when the government of a Western state puts on trial the Parliamentary leader of the party currently highest in the polls, this would be big news to those who supposedly pride themselves in chronicling and commenting on the ways of liberal democracy. Apparently not:
If anyone is puzzled as to why there is so little MSM coverage of this trial that is in the shameful and historic tradition of the trial of Galileo, the reason is unspoken, possibly unconscious media cowardice and embarassment: cowardice driven by the chilling effect of the experience of Kurt Westergaard and other critics of Islam under permanent death threat; and embarassment driven by intense discomfort with frank discussion of the gross incompatibility of basic Islamic beliefs with Western society.

In other words, this code of silence is the code of dhimmitude.
This reminded me of Paul Berman's conclusion to his celebrated 2007 New Republic essay on Tariq Ramadan:
The [Salman] Rushdies of today find themselves under criticism, compared unfavorably in the press with the Islamist philosopher [Tariq Ramadan] who writes prefaces for the collected fatwas of Sheik al-Qaradawi, the theologian of the human bomb. Today the menace to society is declared to be Hirsi Ali and people of similar minds, of whom there are quite a few: John Stuart Mill's Muslim admirers, who are said to be just as fanatical as the fanatics. During the Rushdie affair, courage was saluted. Today it is likened to fascism [by the lefist establishment].

How did this happen? The equanimity on the part of some well-known intellectuals and journalists in the face of Islamist death threats so numerous as to constitute a campaign; the equanimity in regard to stoning women to death; the journalistic inability even to acknowledge that women's rights have been at stake in the debates over Islamism; the inability to recall the problems faced by Muslim women in European hospitals; the inability to acknowledge how large has been the role of a revived anti-Semitism; the striking number of errors of understanding and even of fact that have entered into the journalistic presentations of Tariq Ramadan and his ideas; the refusal to discuss with any frankness the role of Ramadan's family over the years; the accidental endorsement in the Guardian of the great-uncle who finds something admirable in the September 11 attacks--what can possibly account for this string of bumbles, timidities, gaffes, omissions, miscomprehensions, and slanders?

Two developments account for it. The first development is the unimaginable rise of Islamism since the time of the Rushdie fatwa. The second is terrorism.

As for Geert Wilders, he apparently is not amused to be tried by judges who apparently suffer in fear of what they might hear and have to judge. Gates of Vienna reports Wilders' comments:
“This court is apparently not interested in the truth. I cannot conclude anything but that the court does not award me a fair trial,” Geert Wilders said after the court in Amsterdam rejected fifteen of the eighteen witnesses chosen by him.

“I have no respect for this,” Wilders added. He pointed out that in a typical criminal case there are often dozens of witnesses heard. He believes that his case, which he calls a matter of great principle, would also deserve that. Otherwise he cannot prove that he has spoken the truth with the statements that led to his prosecution.
The time is come when we all have to decide whether to shut up or face down our fear of the left-terrorist alliance.

As usual, Walker provides a great roundup of Geert Wilders news.

Thursday, January 21, 2010

Geert Wilders Defends Our Freedom

There is of course something fundamentally wrong with a society that allows its government to prosecute the government's leading political opponent for the inevitably arbitrarily-defined crime of "hate speech", the prosecutors of which avow that truth is not a defense if truth can be deemed hateful. So it's clear that the Netherlands, like much of Europe, is sick. And now with the opening of Geert Wilders' trial it faces a moment of truth: will it go deeper into the madness of totalitarianism or will it rediscover a respect for individual freedom and start to prosecute the real enemies, those who threaten violence against individuals speaking and living freely?

Walker with his blog roundup has great coverage of Day 1 of the Wilders trial. He has also provided video and translation of Wilders' statement to the court: Geert Wilders’ personal speech at pre-trial hearing:
Mister Speaker, judges of the court,

I would like to make use of my right to speak for a few minutes.

Freedom is the most precious of all our attainments and the most vulnerable. People have devoted their lives to it and given their lives for it. Our freedom in this country is the outcome of centuries. It is the consequence of a history that knows no equal and has brought us to where we are now.

I believe with all my heart and soul that the freedom in the Netherlands is threatened. That what our heritage is, what generations could only dream about, that this freedom is no longer a given, no longer self-evident.

I devote my life to the defence of our freedom. I know what the risks are and I pay a price for it every day. I do not complain about it; it is my own decision. I see that as my duty and it is why I am standing here. I know that the words I use are sometimes harsh, but they are never rash. It is not my intention to spare the ideology of conquest and destruction, but I am not any more out to offend people. I have nothing against Muslims. I have a problem with Islam and the Islamization of our country because Islam is at odds with freedom.

Future generations will wonder to themselves how we in 2010, in this place, in this room, earned our most precious attainment. Whether there is freedom in this debate for both parties and thus also for the critics of Islam, or that only one side of the discussion may be heard in the Netherlands? Whether freedom of speech in the Netherlands applies to everyone or only to a few? The answer to this is at once the answer to the question whether freedom still has a home in this country.

Freedom was never the property of a small group, but was always the heritage of us all. We are all blessed by it.

Lady Justice wears a blindfold, but she has splendid hearing. I hope that she hears the following sentences, loud and clear: It is not only a right, but also the duty of free people to speak against every ideology that threatens freedom. Thomas Jefferson, the third President of the United States was right: The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.

I hope that the freedom of speech shall triumph in this trial.

In conclusion, Mister Speaker, judges of the court: This trial is obviously about the freedom of speech. But this trial is also about the process of establishing the truth. Are the statements that I have made and the comparisons that I have taken, as cited in the summons, true? If something is true then can it still be punishable? This is why I urge you to not only submit to my request to hear witnesses and experts on the subject of freedom of speech. But I ask you explicitly to honour my request to hear witnesses and experts on the subject of Islam. I refer not only to Mister Jansen and Mister Admiraal, but also to the witness/experts from Israel, the United States, and the United Kingdom. Without these witnesses, I cannot defend myself properly and, in my opinion, this would not be an fair trial.
See also this recent interview given by Wilders explaining his positions, and also commentary by Bat Ye'or, Daniel Pipes and others.

Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Dutch diviners go Delphic?

nrc.nl - International - Dutchman acquitted of insulting Islam

A question I have raised from time to time in our discussions of free speech and laws targeting putative "hate speech", is how is it possible for any court to draw a line around hate speech without becoming politicized and, quite possibly, mystical. I'm still trying to get my head around this report on the latest definition of hate speech from the Dutch high court. It would appear that to be guilty of hate speech in the Netherlands you have to be "needlessly offensive" and offering a criticism of a group that has little bearing on the members' substantial ideas or behaviour. I suppose this is a reasonable way for a court to limit its exposure to politics without completely tossing out a law that threatens to politicize justice. Still, while limiting the exposure of religious critics to the law, it might seem the court only makes those cases where people will be pursued by the law into something noteworthy, as if we need to make a public spectacle of the needlessly offensive, like someone saying "the devil sucks!".

One wonders how needlessly offensive comments that don't bear on the ideas or behaviour of at least some followers of a religion are to be decided. It might appear that to be guilty one has to be needlessly offensive towards a religious community in a way that is really not too consequential to the world of serious ideas. The court seems to want to leave the door open to serious criticism of religions, and yet criminalize those who are just plain rude and thus, one might think, eminently forgettable and inconsequential if not made into a public demon/martyr. In any case, one imagines finding someone guilty under this law will now become a bizarre process. Geert Wilders is the next challenge for the court:
"Stop the tumour that is Islam" is not an insult to a group on the basis of its religion, the Dutch high court ruled on Tuesday. An activist from the southern town of Valkenswaard, who had hung a poster using this slogan in his window, has been acquitted of the charge, which is similar to one of the charges faced by controversial Dutch anti-Islam member of parliament Geert Wilders.

The man from Valkenswaard had hung the poster after the 2004 murder of Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh by a Muslim extremist. The poster read: "Stop the tumour that is Islam. Theo has died for us. Who will be next? Resist now! National Alliance, we will not bow down to Allah. Join now." [The National Alliance in the Netherlands is an extreme right movement.]

The high court on Tuesday explained its ruling by saying that it is not a crime to express insults towards religion. "Not even if that happens in such a way that the devotees feel their religious feelings are hurt", the court said.

The highest judge in the Netherlands said that only if a needlessly offensive remark is 'explicitly' geared towards a certain group, which is distinct from others in society based on its religion, can there be a matter of group insult as defined in article 137c of the Dutch criminal code. For an insult towards a group to be punishable, that group has to be 'collectively' hit in what defines that group, namely religion. Criticism towards opinions that exist within a group or the behaviour of people belonging to that group cannot be penalized, according to the ruling.

The regional court and the court of appeals had given the man a suspended sentence, but his lawyer took the case all the way to the high court pleading that the defendant only targeted a radical part of Islam that wants to disturb western society. He said the poster was at most a political opinion about a social evil.

The high court said the same criteria of group insult will apply in the prosecution of Geert Wilders. The appeals court in Amsterdam last month ordered that Wilders should be prosecuted for hate speech and inciting discrimination because of his statements about Islam and the short film Fitna.

The judge in that case will also have to determine whether Wilders' remarks are "unmistakeably aimed at a certain group of people that are distinguished from the others in society by their religion". Wilders, when asked to respond, called Tuesday's ruling good news: "This could have consequences for my case".

Wednesday, January 21, 2009

More on Geert Wilders' prosecution by foolish lawyers

An English translation of the Dutch Court of Appeal ruling calling for the criminal prosecution of Geert Wilders is here.

It is an argument that we have seen well refuted in Canada over the last year's debate on the Human Rights Commissions. I won't go into it in any detail now. However, one passage jumped out at me:
The Court of Appeal has considered that the contested views of Wilders (also as shown in his movie Fitna) constitute a criminal offence according to Dutch law as seen in connection with each other, both because of their contents and the method of presentation. This method of presentation is characterized by biased, strongly generalizing phrasings with a radical meaning, ongoing reiteration and an increasing intensity, as a result of which hate is created. According to the Court of Appeal most statements are insulting as well since these statements substantially harm the religious esteem of the Islamic worshippers. According to the Court of Appeal Wilders has indeed insulted the Islamic worshippers themselves by affecting the symbols of the Islamic belief as well.

Secondly, the Court of Appeal has answered the question whether a possible criminal prosecution or conviction would be admissible according to the norms of the European Convention on Human Rights and the jurisprudence of the European Court based thereon, which considers the freedom of expression of paramount importance. The Court of Appeal has concluded that the initiation of a criminal prosecution and a possible conviction later on as well, provided that it is proportionate[my emphasis], does not necessarily conflict with the freedom of expression of Wilders, since statements which create hate and grief made by politicians, taking their special responsibility into consideration, are not permitted according to European standards either.
Provided that it is proportionate! In other words, freedom of speech must be balanced against hate speech. This is the given assumption of the court without any serious consideration of just what it is that is being hated. The object of Wilders' hate cannot be considered for the court would not dare to "insult" Muslims by passing any serious judgment on Islam. Otherwise, how could it outlaw religious insults? Of course, I'm sure one can still insult Christianity in the Netherlands, but we are not really talking about anything but arbitrary justice on behalf of those deemed legitimate victims, when we talk about the legal concept of "proportionality".

As was noted in yesterday's post on the concept of "proportionality" applied to Israel, the concept as a ruling legal principle is mindless: we should be disproportionate in our critique or war on certain evils, like Islamist movements that foment war not on behalf of any realistic vision/reality of a state or national interest, i.e. on behalf of an orderly world, but rather in the cause of an apocalpytic ideology that calls for child martyrs to keep its genocidal flame alive.

In Wilders' somewhat different situation, the Dutch court seems to value the "proportionate" because the court refuses to make any judgments on the good and evil in religion and culture. We have no right to "insult" others too much, whatever they believe, or do, but especially if they are not part of some dominant or established religion/culture. Thus Wilders' has some right to the protection of his freedom of speech; on the other hand, he can't hate Islam too much. At a certain point his hatred is a provocation. (By the way, the court is implying that as a member of the Dutch parliament Wilders' provocation is not actually in the cause of proposing duly-constituted or legitimate legislation on immigration and related matters - Wilders is simply written off as violent - in an age when the Dutch parliament has given up much of its sovereignty to European law.) The Court of Appeal doesn't seem to be arguing for Wilders' prosecution for disturbing the peace, or uttering threats, but only because his expression of political-religious resentment is not proportionate to his right to free speech. And it doesn't really matter why. Wilders might believe the Koran is an evil book, but such value judgments have no relevance to a court in a neo-feudal culture. The court chooses, when it decides to hear a case, to single out one man of hate from the rest of us haters, including the many whose hate is encouraged by a certain popular, intuitive, reading of the Koran.

One may conclude that the cult of "proportionality" is the ascendancy of arbitrary justice: whomever offends the empire's favorites of the day will suffer. Today Wilders, but maybe tomorrow some Muslim. That is how the Dutch-EU elites apparently plan to keep the peace: making it too scary to open your mouth. But as to any rational discussion that would distinguish good and evil: it just got a lot weaker in the Netherlands. But you can't build much of a peaceful order without free debate. You can have unpeaceful debate, in recognition of a shared interest worth fighting about, or you can forego recognition of a shared national interest and live with the consequences when one or another group decides to break from the empire. So, in reality, I'm guessing the Dutch will not keep the peace very successfully, not nearly as well as would a society where people had no right not to be insulted because of their religious beliefs.

So, let me insult where I deem it appropriate: the Dutch elite are fools; their multiculti religion is self-righteous and a dangerous delusion. It will rule and end as horribly as every other Gnostic ideology ever put in power. We should all insult them for it.

Here is the statement by Wilders' Freedom Party:
Court decision an all-out assault on freedom of speech
woensdag 21 januari 2009

The Freedom Party (PVV) is shocked by the Amsterdam Court of Appeal's decision to prosecute Geert Wilders for his statements and opinions. Geert Wilders considers this ruling an all-out assault on freedom of speech.

Geert Wilders: "Apparently this is The Netherlands today. If you speak out you might be prosecuted. To participate in public debate has become a dangerous activity."

"If I have to appear in court, not only I will be prosecuted, but also hundreds of thousands of Dutch citizens who reject the Islamisation of the West. In Dutch Parliament only the Party for Freedom is willing to speak up for the preservation of our culture and our many freedoms."

The Freedom Party leader now faces legal proceedings that will probably take years to conclude and will also involve enormous legal fees.

"We depend on small donations. The Freedom Party is the only party in Parliament that does not accept any government funding. This court decision jeopardizes the very existence of the Freedom Party. We simply cannot afford the enormous legal expenses."

"This is a black day for freedom."


See Fitna here

Sign the Petition and pledge to boycott Dutch goods!
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UPDATE: I regret the title of this post: "foolish" was not nearly strong enough. It is a shame that good minds have to waste time on the utter nonsense of the Dutch court's decision. Ezra Levant has an excellent line by line analysis of the court's mindless hypocrisy, its obvious politicization of the law, which Ezra rightly identifies as little more than a suicide note for the Dutch nation which now issues fatwas against its members. When a high court in what was once a leading Western democracy can descend to this self-righteous evil it is surely a wake up call that we must renew our self-ruling nations now or embrace the coming violence.

Mark Steyn also explores the suicide theme:
The Dutch, like the Canadians, think they can maintain social peace by shriveling the bounds of public discourse and bringing what little remains under state regulation. But one notices that the coercive urge, which comes so naturally to Euro-progressives, only goes in one direction. The Swedish Chancellor of Justice shuts down the investigation into the Grand Mosque of Stockholm for selling tapes urging believers to kill "the brothers of pigs and apes" (ie, Jews) because that's simply "the everyday climate in the rhetoric". The masked men marching through the streets of London with placards threatening to rain down another 9/11 on the infidels are protected by a phalanx of Metropolitan Police officers. The PC nellies of the Canadian "Human Rights" Commission, happy to hound the last neo-Nazi in Saskatchewan posting to the Internet from his mum's basement, won't go anywhere near Abou Hammaad Sulaiman Dameus al-Hayitia, the big-time Montreal imam whose book says infidels are "evil people", Jews "spread corruption and chaos", and homosexuals should be "exterminated".

Instead, the state's response to explicit Islamic intimidation is to punish those foolish enough to point out that intimidation. You don't have to be as intemperate as Minheer Wilders can sometimes be: In the Netherlands even the most innocuous statement can get you into trouble. To express his disgust at Theo van Gogh's murder, the artist Chris Ripke put up a mural outside his studio showing an angel and the words "Thou shalt not kill". But the cops thought this was somehow a dig at the local mosque and so came round, destroyed the mural, arrested the TV news crew filming it, and wiped their tape. The Dutch have determined to commit societal euthanasia, and dislike fellows pointing out it might not be as painless as they've assumed.

Geert Wilders prosecuted for hate speech

http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/024491.php

The collapse of liberal nations and the growth of a totalitarian empire under the false sign of "tolerance", so ably illustrated in the essay highlighted in our previous post, continues with this horrific news from the Netherlands.

We must fight for freedom and the oppressed individual voice in every country, or soon we will not have a world with free individuals and voices, but only groups organized according to some neo-feudal hierarchy by unpresentative, undemocratic, elites. Such a world cannot know much about right and wrong.

For starters, I am now boycotting all things Dutch, hell European.

Sign the Petition and pledge to boycott Dutch goods!

Friday, September 19, 2008

All's Well that Ends. Well....

The TV program NOVA has reported that a police agent in Rotterdam has been dismissed after 19 years of service. The Dutch intelligence AIVD informed the police that the man had spied for the intelligence services of Morocco. www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=trouw%2C+brigadier+ontslagen&bt

The Rotterdam airport has hired the former policeman who was fired from the police force because the Dutch intelligence had found that he worked as a spy for the Moroccan secret service. The airport says that he has no access to the planes. www.volkskrant.nl/binnenland/article1068206.ece/Recherche_start_o

Thanks to Bad News from the Netherlands.

At least the planes are certain to be good hands, he being a policeman and all, and knowing who to keep away from the planes. Whew, I feel safer already.

Thursday, July 10, 2008

The Nekked Truth: Bare Essentials of Christianity in the Netherlands.

The Christian nudist site – Gan Eden – and the nudist park Flevo-Natuur in Zeewolde are planning a nudist church service for 28 September. This is a result of the great success of an earlier such service at the end of June in which 80 nude people participated. Only the pastor, who came from the Roman Catholic diocese of Utrecht, was clothed.
www.telegraaf.nl/binnenland/1461433/__Naakt_in_de_kerkbanken__.h

I was going to include pictures but since they're all in Dutch I figured it's not worth the efforts since no one could understand them. Being a naked hippie in church? Well, that makes universal sense.

Monday, March 24, 2008

Geert Wilders and The New Class

Those who fight against the release of Geert Wilders' short film, Fitna, have some legitimate cause for doing so: they are either Muslim fanatics in support of their fascist poligion, which is understandable and in some sense admirable, or they are the Left dhimmi fascists who use Muslims as proxies in a war against Modernity, a despicable collusion with primitivist fascism. Even they are vaguely understandable. What is sickening beyond redemption is the state of our States. Our political leaders are creepy and cowardly, and if we continue electing them to represent us....

"Some in Europe have accused the Dutch politician of being a provocateur, of deliberately provoking the Muslim umma to violence. But this characterization distorts what is in fact a serious purpose. What Wilders wants to reveal, above all, is that the violence is already an innate part of the umma. Besides Muslim intolerance, the Dutchman is also standing up to the moral feebleness of some of his own countrymen, whom he has called "cowards." Every television network in Holland has refused to run his film, leaving only the Internet, where Fitna will probably be posted on YouTube.

Moreover, in response to Prime Minister Balkenende's fainthearted warning that, in case of a terrorist attack, he would be held partially responsible, Wilders defiantly replied: "The Cabinet may go down on its knees before Islam and capitulate, but I will never do that. The film will be released." The Freedom party leader has also called Balkenende "a timid man who has chosen the side of the Taliban."

In an unprecedented speech to the Dutch parliament this month, Wilders again pointed to the danger a creeping Islamification poses to Holland and Europe, warning it was "a few minutes to midnight." He also chided the ruling party for betraying the Dutch culture and people, calling one minister "stark raving mad" in the speech for having said that sharia law could be introduced into Holland.

Wilders has paid a heavy price for his position. He has had his own freedom restricted. Death threats from Muslim extremists have caused him to be put under 24-hour police protection for the past two years. Wilders thus joins the growing list of people in Europe requiring protection from Islamic radicals. At one time, it was only Salman Rushdie who was forced to live in hiding; now, as one observer pointed out, such people are so numerous they nearly constitute a new social class....

Excerpted from: The Islamists' Nemesis By Stephen Brown

at FrontPageMagazine.com | 3/24/2008

Thanks to Yid with Lid: http://yidwithlid.blogspot.com/2008/03/geert-wilders-field-general-against.html
****

We, as a collective body of Modernist citizens, are the new class of trembling dhimmis. Geert Wilders is now our most visible defender in our hope of remaining free citizens. We are all under 24 hour guard from our police and military, as is Wilders, though our protection is less immediate than his-- for now. Our position won't improve if we concede yet more privilege to Islam. If we continue to roll over for each and every Muslim complaint, it will get further worse for us. And then even worse. And eventually we will just die. It ain't for me. Call me a fascist, a Right wing religious bigot, what-have-you; I'm willing to fight for our Modernity and our collective democracy. And you?

Cross-posted at No Dhimmitude.

Wilders is a fascist, claim fascists

There is no legitimate distinction to be made between the so-called Left and the so-called Right, no matter the howls of protest we might hear from either faction of the totalitarian collectivists. But we do pretend and we do see that many make this false distinction as if it is meaningful. Geert Wilders, for example, a democrat of some sort, is continuously maligned as a "far Right" politician. What the Hell does it mean? Not a thing, but it sounds good in the hysteria of the Left's campaign to destroy his position in public. Stand against the fascist Islamic poligion and find yourself slotted with Nazis, as below. Shameful? There is no end to the shame of many of the intelligentsia we are saddled with.

Vittorio Hernandez - AHN News Writer

Berlin, Germany (AHN) - The Central Council of Jews in Germany filed a suit at a Hamburg court against Google and YouTube over anti-Semitic videos. The videos in dispute include a photo of former Central Council of Jews head Paul Spiegel ablaze with a swastika in the background.

The video was on YouTube's site for months. The council said the video incites racial hatred and discrimination.

YouTube is not a stranger to controversies. Right-wing extremist messages and videos have been discovered in 2006, while the Nazi propaganda film "Jud Suss" was downloaded on the site in 2007 despite the presence of new filtering software.

Stephen Kramer, general secretary of the council, told Spiegel online, "The radical right-wing scene is using YouTube massively, as a platform. In defense, Google Germany's spokesman Kay Oberbeck said YouTube has self-policing features that allows site members to complain about an offending video with the click of a mouse, and that material could no longer be reposted on the site in the future.

Meanwhile, the Netherlands Islamic Federation asked a court in The Hague to come up with a board of censors to review a film about the Islam religion with the aim of banning it for attacking their faith. Right-wing extremist Geert Wilders plans to exhibit the movie despite growing complaints from different groups....
http://www.allheadlinenews.com/articles/7010424360

Muslim fascists and Left dhimmi fascists have preempted Wilders' showing so far of his short film Fitna. The shameful lies keep on coming. A democrat in our midst is slandered as a neo-Nazi, and not a blink from our intelligentsia. Good Lord.

So, it will soon be time for us to demonstrate our disgust of the intelligentsia and our support of Wilders and our Modernity and its basic democratic foundation. I'm prepared to endure the crap of Left fascists calling me a fascist. I'll stand in front of a government sponsored Dutch site and protest till I burst. Metaphorically, I hope. And I hope to see you there when the time comes. No lawsuits, it's time to take to the streets in defence of democracy.

Cross-posted at No Dhimmitude.

Go, Wilders, Go!

Geert Wilders is facing death for publicly stating that in his opinion, Islam is a fascism, that the Qur'an promotes violence,and that the Qur'an, like Mein Kampf, should be banned from the Netherlands. OK, the Pope quotes a Byzantine emperor discussing Reason and God's plan for Humanity: it sets off riots and murder among Muslim nations, Muslims go berserk and kill people. A Danish newspaper prints innocuous cartoons of Mohammed, and, yes, the same result. I sneeze in the bathroom, no riots as yet but I'm holding my breath.

Geert Wilders is a Dutch parliamentarian. In the greater scheme of things he's only marginally more visible to the public than I or than you. But he is under 24 hour per day guard by the Dutch secret police to keep Muslims from murdering him. Wilders is only one of a growing number of private and public figures in the same position, under threat of murder by Muslims, under guard by police. The fact is, we in the West are all in something like the same position: the police and militaries of our various nations conducting round the clock exercises to ensure that we too aren't murdered by Muslim fanatics and or their sympathisers as were Pim Fortuyn and Theo van Gogh. It's only going to get worse. Lots of our own are pretending this is not happening, that what's happening isn't important, that this effort to kill at random is not the fault of jihadis but is due to the existence of Israel, due to American imperialism, is due to the Moon being in Virgo. Uh huh. We are all to some extent in the same position Geert Wilders is in. We face death at the hands and by the designs of jihadis.

Wilders is trying to show a short film, a 15 minute film, to give a sense of why Muslims are doing this outrageous thing to the world. He is being stymied at every turn. It is to our collective benefit that he succeed here, and we are being cheated by nearly everyone in a position to make his effort successful. It's up to us to ensure his success. We have to support our own freedom by supporting Wilders' efforts to show his film, especially because so many Muslims don't like it. They aren't special and they have to know it concretely. Muslims are no more privileged than anyone else. If they don't like criticism of their religion, such as it is, then too bad for them. We must do what we can to make them get over it, even if it means rubbing the noses of Muslims everywhere in the images of hostile films.

Too! Bad! Get over it.

CNN during the cartoon intifada ran a banner each day for weeks reading "Out of respect for Islam CNN is not showing the Danish cartoons." Today CNN runs some older news about another censorship effort from America:

CNN) -- A Web site promoting a Dutch lawmaker's film critical of Islam has been suspended by its host company after the firm received unspecified complaints about its content, the company disclosed Sunday.

"This site has been suspended while Network Solutions is investigating whether the site's content is in violation of the Network Solutions Acceptable Use Policy," the company said in a posting on the Web site set up to promote the film. "Network Solutions has received a number of complaints regarding this site that are under investigation."

[....]

The company did not immediately respond to a request for further comment.

Network Solutions' terms of service ban material "that is obscene, defamatory, libelous, unlawful, harassing, abusive, threatening, harmful, vulgar, constitutes an illegal threat, violates export control laws, hate propaganda, fraudulent material or fraudulent activity, invasive of privacy or publicity rights, profane, indecent or otherwise objectionable material of any kind or nature."

Last month, Pakistan's government blocked the popular video-sharing Web site YouTube because of a "highly blasphemous" and "anti-Quranic" video featuring Wilders, according to a government news release. The video was reportedly a trailer for his movie....

http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/europe/03/24/dutch.koran/

That blurb was about Geert Wilders and his film Fitna. Network Solutions is an American company Wilders used to show the trailer for his up-coming film on the Internet.They shut him down due to "complaints." Maybe they don't think of themselves as similar to the Pakistani government. I see them as similar. I also await CNN's efforts to show Wilders' film on video through their network. In that case I am not holding my breath.

If we don't care about democracy and our Modernity, then there are many others around us who are happy to take it from uw, to destroy it and enslave us, literally and more or less permanently. End of your life as you've always lived it. Some work hard toward that end, some of our own, some of our good-intentions Left, our church goers, our politicians, our business people. Wilders stands up to all this. I'm going to stand with him, here in my isolated little place in Canada. I'm going to demonstrate in support of Wilders and his film. It's not a big splash, not like CNN doing the news, but I'll be in the open and I'll show my support for the good, which is something you'll likely never see from CNN and the others of that ilk. I hope you'll attend here and join me when the time and place are known. It's democracy, and I intend to exercise my right to it.

For further details, please turn to http://nodhimmitude.blogspot.com till I can catch up here with the general outline.

Wednesday, March 05, 2008

The Flowering of Dutch Muliti-culturalism: "So much hate"

"I'm 18 years old and have friends who feel so much hate against Arabic people because [we] are terrified."
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The following comment comes from a blog by a liberal leftist writing from an island in the Pacific ocean, but the comment itself is written by a young person who doesn't have the luxury of spinning nonsense from afar. The comment is from a Dutchman stuck with Muslims. Following that, some more news and views of the Netherlands and government regarding Geert Wilders and his up-coming film, Fitna. First, a young Dutchman.

Fitna: The Reality.

Continued here. I go on at some length, as usual.

Tuesday, February 05, 2008

The Sword of Islamocles

Geert Wilders, a minor politician in the Netherlands, promises to release a ten minute film portraying the Koran as a fascistic work, and he does so in the expectation of riling Muslims to protest. Wilders suggests that the Koran be banned from the Netherlands. Wilders seems to be deliberately antagonizing the Muslim militant population in the Netherlands, knowing in advance the likely outcome of his provocation, having seen already the Muslim furor during the so-called Danish Cartoons incident, roughly 100 dead, property destroyed, the Danish economy made to suffer, relations with the Islamic world harmed. Wilders is seemingly doing deliberately what the Danish cartoonists didn't do at all: provoking a Muslim madness. If Wilders claims he is only exercising his rights to free speech in the Netherlands or that he's showing that such rights are under attack and need to be protected from further encroachments, I think the man will leave me teary-eyed at the gate as he sails into the sunset of my esteem; everyone concerned knows the film Wilders claims to be producing is not about the Koran but is specifically meant to piss off Muslims to the point they go enraged and violent into the streets to attack the European order. If Wilders releases his film in public the certainty of violence on the part of Muslims is almost certain, would be incredible were it not to occur. We all know that Wilders is going to try to do something that will get people killed. What about it?

Wilders' life isn't going to suffer any further constraints than he lives under now if he releases a film that antagonizes Muslims. There's not much more the Muslims can do to him than they already do. Not Wilders but others stand to lose, and they stand to lose their lives because they aren't politicians under 24 hour state guard protecting them from Muslim militants. If Wilders releases his film and that drives Muslims crazy and violent, who will protect you and me from the Muslims? Not Wilders. We'll be on our own.

We can be totally certain that if Wilders releases his film and if that sends Muslims into fits of public and random violence, there will be the usual suspects out claiming that he is responsible for the harm done, abetted by the government who didn't stop him, &c. Nothing new there. But if we're not teen-aged intellectuals or middle-aged Death Hippies, if we are in fact just ordinary folks who live private lives and who aren't really responsible for much of anything outside our own behaviour, then what are we to make a man who might do something that could get us killed just for being by-standers? Who is this minor Dutch politician and what gives him the right to play with the lives of others?

On the face of it, Wilders' film, no matter what he does in it, isn't going to be more than an objective yawn for most of the world, a short nothing of a film no one would care about at all if not for Muslims and their entirely predictable violent reaction to manufactured offense. it's obviously not the movie. It's the fact that Wilders is deliberately provoking a hostile crowd who will turn violent a the first opportunity. Some dutch might be killed over this. Muslims will likely do the killing if there is any. If Muslims are killed by the police it won't disturb me at all; but if innocent by-standers are harmed, then it seem to me to be a bad thing-- that they are harmed or killed. I can't see this as a problem from Geert Wilders and his deliberate provocation of violent lunatics. That just don't count for nothing.

Geert Wilders didn't create the Cyclops now living in the Netherlands. That particular Islamic beast is the collective creation of the Dutch innocent by-standers themselves. The very Dutch of the Netherlands themselves forged and hoisted the Sword of Islam that now hangs by a thread over the collective people, and they have no one else to blame for this crisis than themselves. Small comfort that most Netherlanders are not particularly responsible for the destructive thing that is Islam in the nation. The Netherlanders voted this way or that, paid their taxes, lived their lives, and now they face a possibility of being murdered by jihadis riled up by a local politician. I'm not claiming any of this is fair. I might even have some sympathy for the people, those who are harmed or killed, if Wilders film comes out as planned and if it gives jihadis an excuse to riot and burn and kill. Some sympathy but not a lot. Wilders didn't create the Islamic menace in the Netherlands, cowards did that; and now cowards will have to pay for that cowardice. Cowards allowed out-of-control Muslims to become entirely out-of-control because cowards could not face criticism of their peers and they could not face the fact that their phantasies were nothing more than stupid and harmful, thus continuing on till such a pass as this. Cowards pay.

Wilders isn't necessarily a coward. If the Dutch go into the streets to fight pitched battles with Muslim rioters, then perhaps Wilders will be there in the front line. But that's not the kind of cowardice and courage I mean here. It's not physical courage that counts today, it's moral courage, the very kind most Europeans don't have in any great supply, judging from what we see in the nations of that dying land right now. This issue is not about Wilders at all, it's about what the dutch are going to do to stand up to and defeat those who would kill them in the streets. Wilders is very much provoking the people of the Netherlands to stand up and fight for the nation and for a free live of genuine privacy. What courage will the Netherlands show the world?

Jihad in the West is the creation of cowardly Europeans and Americans. Jihad in the West is the creation of cowards who refused to stop it from coming and to stomp it out when it grew. If now some people are harmed or killed by the very jihadis they have made possible, then I shrug and hope I come out unharmed. If not, I'll blame not Geert Wilders but the politicians and Left dhimmi fascists who made this threat that overhangs me and all of us.