Truth on trial

The Netherlands is littered with the graves of thousands of Canadian soldiers and airman who gave their lives to liberate Holland from the tyranny of the Nazis.

I wonder what those men would think of the Dutch today if they could see the country that was reborn from the ashes of German occupation. Would they think their sacrifice was wasted?

In Amsterdam, in 1944, if you strode into the public square, stood on a bench, and denounced Nazism, you would likely have been murdered on the spot, if any Nazis were present. If they weren’t, chances are, a fellow countryman, likely a government functionary, wishing to appease and curry favour with the occupiers, would have turned you in.

In 2010, if you were to stand in the same spot and say the same things about Islam, you have a pretty good chance of being shot or knifed to death by Islamists, considering the fates of Pim Fortuyn and Theo Van Gogh. You have an equally good chance of being turned on by the government functionaries and driven from the country, as was Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Or put on trial by those same people, as is the fate of our friend, the popular nationalist politician, Geert Wilders.

Wilders goes on trial today for saying rude things about Islam and for wanting to preserve Dutch and European culture in the face of another tyrannical “ism”, Islamism.

Unlike the situation of the last generation when the country was occupied by a foreign invader promulgating a nasty, brutal religion of its own making, this new “ism” is a hostile religion that was invited in by the Dutch and made as comfortable as possible and appeased at every turn in the road, no matter how suicidal its demands are to the historic nature and character of the Dutch nation.

Many commentators talk about how this is a battle over free speech.

In part, it is.

Free speech doesn’t exist in Europe, or in Canada for that matter, and hasn’t for some time. It resulted from a unilateral surrender in an undeclared war long ago.

All the members of the EU have passed anti-speech legislation intended to prevent people from spreading the evil doctrines perpetrated by the Nazis, but these laws have now been used to prevent citizens from discussing another doctrine they find evil; namely, Islam.

In Canada, we can trace the exact date free speech died. It perished in the Supreme Court of Canada on December 13, 1990 when the high court upheld legislated speech-limiting laws, giving the government of Canada the license to prosecute people for speaking their minds even when what they speak is the truth and even when that discourse is of a political and public nature.

But at least we have not yet descended to the scurrilous level of using the court to try to penalize and destroy a legitimate leader of a political party with seats in the legislatures of the Netherlands and the EU for expressing his constituents’ viewpoints, as the Dutch are doing.

This is nothing less than an attack on democracy.

For some time, I have been reading his website, listening to his speeches and watching his interviews, and I have concluded that Wilders is a very principled person. I have not observed that he has said or written one word on this subject that is not truthful

It is truth that is on trial.

Geert Wilders: "Europe is at the crossroads once again. We either choose the road to darkness or the road to freedom."

Our good friend, Geert Wilders, the Dutch parliamentarian with the 1950's hairstyle and the retinue of bodyguards, has been in the news again lately. The recent elections to the European Union saw a sharp turn away from the multi-cult, politically correct, socialists to the more European-centred, nationalist parties.

Wilders and his party did exceptionally well and he was recently celebrating it in a speech in Denmark. Go to this site for the full text.

Here are some highlights that caught my attention:

Why is it good news that the socialists lost by such a margin?

Let me answer this myself. It’s good news because socialists are the most inveterate cultural relativists in Europe. They regard the Islamic culture of backwardness and violence as equal to our Western culture of freedom, democracy and human rights. In fact, it is the socialists who are responsible for mass immigration, Islamization and general decay of our cities and societies. It is the socialists who are responsible for the fact that cities such as Rotterdam, Marseille and Malmö seem to be situated in Eurabia rather than in Europe.

And they are even proud of it.

Our Western elite, whether they are politicians, journalists or judges, have lost their way completely. All sense of reality has vanished. All common sense has been thrown to the wind. They take all efforts to deny the things that take place in front of our eyes, and deny everything that is so obviously seen by everyone else.
They won’t stand firm on any issue.

Their cultural relativism affects absolutely everything up to the point where they no longer see the difference between good and evil, or between nonsense and logical common sense. Everything is pushed into a grey area, a foggy marsh without beginning or end. The only moral standard they still seem to apply is the question whether or not it is approved by Muslims. Everything Muslims disapprove, they disapprove too.

On the matter of the cost to the treasury of mass migration, Wilders threw out these figures:

According to the Dutch Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis, mass immigration has to date cost the Dutch taxpayer more than one hundred billion Euros. According to the Danish national bank, every Danish Muslim immigrant costs the Danish state more than 300,000 Euros. A Swedish economist has calculated that mass immigration costs the Swedish taxpayer twenty-seven billion dollars annually. In Norway a warning has been issued to the effect that the proceeds from North Sea oil will have to be spent entirely on mass immigration, while in France official figures have been published suggesting that mass immigration is reducing growth in the French economy by two-thirds. In other words, mass immigration, demographic developments and Islamization are certainly partly causes of Europe’s steadily increasing impoverishment and decay.

Of course Wilders doesn’t believe it is possible for the Muslim population of Europe to truly integrate with Europeans and he pointed out that this is not a new discovery by citing this 1959 statement of Charles de Gaulle:

“Those who recommend integration must be considered pea-brained even if they are scholars and scientists. Just try mixing oil and vinegar. Then shake the bottle. After a moment the two substances will separate again. Do you really believe French society could absorb ten million Muslims, who would be twenty million tomorrow and forty million the day after? In fact, my own village would no longer be Colombey-les-deux-Églises but would rather come to be known as Colombey-les-deux-mosques.”

I also have come to the same conclusion as his depiction of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict having less to do with a squabble over some crappy desert lands, but a war rooted in religion and race.

Islam forces Israel to fight. The so called ‘Middle East conflict’ is not at all a conflict about land. It is not about some inches of land in Gaza, Judea or Samaria. It is a conflict about ideologies, it is a battle between freedom and Islam, a battle between good and evil, to Islam the whole of Israel is occupied territory. To Islam Tel Aviv and Haifa are settlements too.

Israel is the only democracy in the entire Middle-East. Israel is an oasis of enlightment, whereas the rest of the Middle-East is covered by the black veil of the night.

Valentine's Day, and "The times they are a changing"

Valentine’s Day is for lovers.

This Valentine’s Day should be dedicated to the lovers of free speech who are living in cultures that are committing suicide.

It seems hard to believe, but it was 20 years ago today that the world was shocked to learn that some bearded cleric in Iran, the Ayatollah Khomeini, could issue a death warrant against an author in Britain, Salman Rushdie, that would cause that writer to go into hiding and receive police protection for the next decade. Because the alleged offense was dressed up in the guise of insulting a religion, the leaders of other religions rushed to condemn the author for causing the trouble.

What have we learned from this?

Considering the history of the conflict between Islam and western liberal-democracies since that day, I would have to conclude very little.

Each time somebody raises their head to say or write or cartoon something about Islam, out come the religious fanatics in terrifying displays of violence and threats. But more frightening than this is the reaction of the authorities in western societies. They have taken their cue from the “leadership” displayed by the Christian and Jewish clergy towards Rushdie and have applied it to those who question either Islam or the wisdom of permitting large scale immigration from Muslim countries.

I saw Kathy Shaidle on TVO’s public affairs program, The Agenda, this week, making a point that the decline of Christianity as a popular religion has “caused” its replacement by Islam in western Europe. Not exactly. Large scale immigration of young Muslims contributes to this phenomenon, as well as aging, non-reproducing Europeans.

In Britain, it is the mouthing of the Christian clergy suggesting that Sharia law should be incorporated into Britain’s legal system that is contributing to the robustness of the Islamic project. The Christian and Jewish clergy continue to be an obstacle to understanding the threats to liberal democracy with all their nattering on about “the commonality of the faiths” and their inter-faith dialogues.

To parapharase the old Bob Dylan anthem:

Come priests, rabbis
Please heed the call
Don’t stand in the doorway
Don’t block up the hall
For he that gets hurt
Will be he who has stalled
There’s a battle outside raging
It’ll soon shake your windows
And rattle your walls
For the times they are a changin’

In Sweden, Belgium, France, Britain, Spain, Germany and especially the Netherlands, the “troublemakers” are suppressed to appease the angry Muslims. Muslims parade through the streets of European cities with posters and banners calling for the downfall of western societies and the replacement of their liberal-democracies with Islam and the odious Sharia law -- these would be the non-troublemakers, by the way, if you forgot to buy a program before the parade.

Politicians who speak on behalf of their constituents against this rising tide of Islamic hegemony are beaten by police or criminally charged with “disturbing the harmony” of the community. Their homes are invaded by police without warrants to remove symbols Muslims claim are offensive. At least one Dutch politician, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, fled to the United States when the state turned on her for raising issues that affected Muslim women in the Netherlands. Another, Geert Wilders, has been denied entry to a fellow member state of the EU, Britain.

Publishers in Britain have been forced to shred books about Muslims that might subject them to financially ruinous lawsuits from wealthy Arabs. One American publisher refused to print a novel about one of the wives of Mohammed for fear of reprisal by Muslims.

In Canada, the shameful human rights tribunals have been turned into state-supported fatwa-issuing organs for Islamic activists. Even reform-minded Muslims have been threatened with death by Muslim extremists (to date, nobody charged with the crime) and told to tone it down so that “harmony” will prevail. Despite the increasing boldness of Islamic advocates to choke off any rational discussion of Islam, Barbara Hall, Ontario’s Human Rights Commissioner, foolishly proposes even more legislation to provide better tools for Islamists to crush free speech.

Internationally, the Organization of Islamic Countries (57 members) has promulgated its own human rights code that declares the supremacy of Sharia law, notwithstanding their members prior agreement to the 1948 Declaration of Human Rights. As well, the OIC has obtained a resolution of the United Nations General Assembly to criminalize criticism of religion.

This step has enabled the state of Jordan to issue a warrant for the arrest of Geert Wilders for insulting Islam should he travel outside the territory of the Netherlands.

The mainstream media has been generally unhelpful to the cause of free speech. In Canada, they woke up very late in the game when the charade conducted by human rights tribunals against Mark Steyn and Maclean's magazine was well underway. The blogosphere was ahead of the curve on that one, and remains ahead of it.

When the MSM are not asleep at the switch they are thoughtlessly dismissing Islamic critics as a bunch of Islamophobes (bigots) – a term coined by Islamists as an aid to the politically correct police to further stifle commentary about Islam.

And they wonder why they are losing market share!

Even today, you will see pundits and columnists writing stuff like this: “Well, I don’t much like or agree with Mark Steyn or Geert Wilders, but I do support free speech.”

Why the Pontius Pilate posturing of washing your hands before making the statement about free speech? Can’t you just say that they are being unfairly targeted for their opinions, which, in a free liberal democracy they are supposed to be able to voice, without this politically correct preamble? What are you afraid of – Islamic retribution – other people in society who think there shouldn’t be free speech (people you should be shunning anyway) -- Barbara Hall?

Hmmm. On reflection, perhaps you should be afraid of Barbara Hall.

I see no silver lining.

A great victory for the Muslim community

Geert Wilders has been banned from entering Britain by the Labour government. On February 12 he was to attend a meeting with members of the House of Lords to screen his anti-Islamic film, Fitna, and to answer questions concerning it, at the invitation of the Lords.

One Muslim Lord, Nazir Ahmed, had threatened to turn out 10,000 Muslims in the streets to block him from getting to the meeting. On learning of the ban, Ahmed declared it a “great victory for the Muslim community”.

If the prevention of the exercise of free speech by a member of a Parliament of an EU member is great victory for the Muslim community, then what does that say about the Muslim community? It says exactly what Geert Wilders says about it – it is totalitarian in outlook and intolerant of liberal-democracy.

Lord Pearson renewed the invitation and published the following media release:

Despite threats of demonstration from a British Peer and Muslim community leaders, the meeting will go ahead. Wilders’ film Fitna features verses from the Quran alongside images of the terrorist attacks in the US on 11 September 2001, Madrid in March 2004 and London in July 2005. The film equates Islam’s holy text with violence and ends with a call to Muslims to remove ‘hate preaching’ verses from the Quran. It provoked protests in Muslim-majority countries including Indonesia and Pakistan.

The leader of the Dutch Freedom Party, Wilders has lived under 24 hour police protection since 2004. Following Fitna’s release online in March 2008 al-Qaeda issued a fatwa calling for Wilders’ murder.

Wilders currently faces prosecution in Holland for incitement to hatred and discrimination. The charges are based on his film Fitna and comments in the Dutch press last year in which he argued that as Mein Kampf has been banned in Holland, the Quran should similarly be banned under Dutch incitement laws.

Wilders called the Dutch Court of Appeal’s decision to prosecute an attack on freedom of expression. “Participation in the public debate has become a dangerous activity. If you give your opinion, you risk being prosecuted,” he said.

Wilders has indicated his intention to go to London despite the ban.

While many people support Wilders campaign to prevent the Islamification of Europe, they are disturbed thar he seems hypocritical by advocating a ban on of the Koran. In fact, his point is that the Netherlands bans Mein Kampf and ought to be considering the Koran in the same light. Wilders should just have called for an end to the ban on Mein Kampf.

In Canada, the huge retail bookstore chain, Chapters Indigo, that controls about 80% of the retail book trade in Canada banned Mein Kampf from its stores. But you can still get the Koran if you go to this site.