I mentioned a couple of days ago that a new coalition government has been agreed upon in the Netherlands. As expected, the cabinet will consist of a VVD/CDA minority coalition, backed by Geert Wilders’ party, the PVV.

Details of the new government’s program have now emerged, and when I read what they’re planning, it made my mouth water. The most conservative Republican government imaginable would never attempt half of this stuff in the USA. Just think — if only Geert had been born in Kenya, we could elect him president!

Our Flemish correspondent VH has translated several articles from the Dutch media about the new government, German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s reaction to it, and Geert Wilders’ upcoming trial for hate speech.

First, from De Telegraaf:

“Everyone will notice some of it”

“We’re cutting the budget by €18 billion in the coming years. Everyone will notice some of that,” VVD leader Mark Rutte said Thursday at the presentation of the coalition agreement of the VVD and CDA with support of the PVV. The cabinet Rutte wants will give the country back to the “hard-working Dutchman”.

The government will work hard to increase safety. “We want to put the burglars in chains, not you,” said Rutte — as expected, the incoming Prime Minister. There will be a national police force [instead of the local and regional police]. Street-terror [usually performed by the enriched “new Dutch”] will be tackled hard. There will be minimum sentences handed out to recidivists for crimes for which there is a maximum sentence of twelve years or more.

The TBS system [“offenders with severe personality disorders who are detained in special forensic psychiatric institutions”] will be cut back. Trial-leaves will be addressed. Criminals with dual nationality will loose their Dutch citizenship. The ticket quota [in which a police officer has to write out 120-160 fines a year or else has to face losing a promotion or a cut in salary] will be abolished. Coffee shops [where soft drugs are permitted to be sold and consumed] must become closed clubs where clients are only allowed in with a ‘club card’.

There will be a strict immigration policy. The influx of non-western immigrants has to decrease substantially, according to Wilders by 50%. Illegal residence in the Netherlands will become punishable.

There will also be a burqa ban:

Burkas and other face-covering clothing will be banned. Police officers and judges will not be allowed to wear headscarves. Unemployed persons who due to their behavior or dress code will be less likely to find a job will feel it in their pocketbooks. Their welfare benefits will be reduced, or they will not have any right at all to them. [source]

And those who “take it easy” with their citizenship course, may lose their residence permit:

Turks will also have to continue to integrate. The judge recently ruled that such would not be required for Turks, based on a European treaty, but the new government wants to alter the treaty-agreement. The government wants to spend less on subsidies for integration. Only “Vluchtelingenwerk” [“Refugee aid”] will be spared. People who come from elsewhere have no more special preference in applications. The abolition of “affirmative action” will also affect women [source]

[…]

There will be no “road pricing”. The speed limit on motorways will go up from 120 to 130 kilometers per hour. The mortgage tax-reduction will remain in place. The coalition is committed to more nuclear energy. Applications for permits for the construction of one or more nuclear power plants that meet these requirements will therefore be granted.

The new government wants a smaller government and fewer politicians. That should yield €6 billion. The number of MPs will be reduced from 150 to 100, the number of senators from 75 to 50. There will be fewer ministers and state secretaries. The new government also wants to cut the number of elected representatives in local councils, Waterschap boards [maintenance of rivers and dykes and so on] and provincial governments’ Neighborhood Councils will be abolished.

The contribution of the Netherlands to the EU must go down by about €1 billion euros, according to Rutte. The Netherlands insisted a few years ago on that discount. That reduction Rutte now wants to secure “because if you’re not careful, you’ll lose it.”

The budget for Development Aid will be cut by €1 billion.

The coalition will continue with the testing phase of the new Joint Strike Fighter (JSF). This means that the Netherlands will buy two test aircraft from Lockheed Martin.

The Public Broadcaster [also called “state broadcaster” and a stronghold of the multiculturalists] will, as Wilders says, lose a “few hundred million”.

VH adds that there will be a Yellow Card for Islamic schools:

Under the new government, Islamic schools should especially be careful. According to the presented coalition agreement, these schools often do not have their affairs in order. “Research has shown that Islamic education has weaknesses in terms of governing power, education, citizenship education (rule of law) and regularity of the use of financial resources. […] Research has further shown that schools with radically innovative educational concepts also have these problems. These schools thus will be faced with more rapid closure.”

Freedom of education is not in question, the politicians promise. “The fact remains that (very) weak schools must quickly, within one year, have the educational process in order. If not, then they will proceed to closure.” The authors of the agreement also want people who are working in the industry and business to teach in schools.

And from De Telegraaf:

Wilders: Frau Merkel, Sie haben kein Recht

PVV leader Geert Wilders finds that German Chancellor Angela Merkel should refrain from commenting on political cooperation between the VVD, PVV and CDA in the Netherlands. Merkel said this week that she regrets the cooperation. “Frau Merkel, Sie haben kein Recht,” Wilders said Thursday in German.

CDA leader Maxime Verhagen is convinced that the Netherlands and Germany “can get along as neighbors in a fruitful manner” once the German Chancellor Angela Merkel has read the coalition agreement. Verhagen, at present also the outgoing Foreign Minister also, said he agrees that Merkel has nothing to do with the formation of coalition governments in other countries, and underlined the good relations he has with Merkel personally and with her party, the Christian Democratic CDU/CSU.

Also from De Telegraaf:

Greenpeace activists have climbed the Ridderzaal [“Knights Hall” next to the parliament buildings in the Binnenhof] and attached a banner. The text on the banner reads “Cabinet Rutte: #viezerkanniet [“dirtier is not possible”]. The text “#viezerkanniet” can be looked up on the social network Twitter to discuss the plans of the new government, especially regarding the environment. The police have made it known that the protesters will have half an hour to make their point. After that the police are expected to act.

And, once again, from De Telegraaf:

First day of Wilders Trial live on Dutch TV

The NOS [state broadcaster] will broadcast the first day of the trial against Geert Wilders this Monday live. The PVV leader must appear in court in Amsterdam on suspicion of insulting Muslims and ethnic minorities and incitement to discrimination and hatred. The beginning of the session can be seen on Netherlands channel 1, the digital news channel Journaal24, and via the web, the broadcaster announced Thursday.

The live broadcast will start at 08.55 hours with the NOS News. The session itself will start at nine. If there is a reason for it, it will then be switched to the Hague for the latest political news, given the current developments surrounding the newly-formed Cabinet. The remaining session days on October 6, 8, 12, 15 and 19 can be followed on the theme channel. The ruling is scheduled for Nov. 2.

Turkey’s vice-premier says that after Turkey gains entry to the EU, it will eventually control it. He voiced this opinion at World Leadership Forum in New York during a plenary session of the UN.

In other news, a man in Saudi Arabia told police that his daughter was abducted by a djinn and has disappeared. This is not the first time that a djinn has possessed the poor girl: in a previous incident the spirit carried her off to Riyadh. The police have mounted an intensive search for the girl.

To see the headlines and the articles, open the full news post.

Thanks to C. Cantoni, DF, JD, KGS, Kitman, TB, and all the other tipsters who sent these in.

Commenters are advised to leave their comments at this post (rather than with the news articles) so that they are more easily accessible.

Caveat: Articles in the news feed are posted “as is”. Gates of Vienna cannot vouch for the authenticity or accuracy of the contents of any individual item posted here. We check each entry to make sure it is relatively interesting, not patently offensive, and at least superficially plausible. The link to the original is included with each item’s title. Further research and verification are left to the reader.

Long-time readers will recall Martin Bosma, whom I met on a visit to Diana West’s house a couple of years ago. Mr. Bosma is a Dutch MP for the Party for Freedom (De Partij voor de Vrijheid, the PVV) and an associate of Geert Wilders.

As it happens, Martin Bosma has just published a book, whose release happily coincides with the formation of a new center-right government strongly influenced by his own party. Mr. Bosma’s book is about the history of the PVV, his role in the party, and the recent upheavals in the Dutch political scene.

Our Flemish correspondent VH has compiled a report about the launch of Martin Bosma’s book. He begins with an introduction compiled from various newspaper articles:

Martin Bosma — member of parliament for the PVV, its fraction secretary, quadruple campaign leader, and the man of the hour of the Group Wilders — has published a book on the multicultural Netherlands and the beginning of the PVV.

In his book “De schijn-élite van de valse munters” (The Pseudo-Elite of the Counterfeiters) — with as subtitle “Drees^[1], the extreme right, the Sixties, useful idiots, Group Wilders and me” — the PVV MP Martin Bosma unfolds his range of ideas, but also shines a personal light on the years of his political career, the years in which Pim Fortuyn and Theo van Gogh were murdered and Geert Wilders developed into the most outspoken politician in the Netherlands.

In recent decades, society has changed dramatically, with its main development being the multicultural society. The population, however, was always opposed to the influx. Why then did it still happen anyway? If there are so many forces gathering to put every effort possible into constantly stepping up the mass immigration, there apparently must be compelling reasons to sacrifice the stability of the Netherlands for this.

In his book, Martin Bosma lays the blame on the spirit of May 1968 and the elites who then received a blow from which they never recovered. The leftist elites are just as blind to Islam as they were in those days to Communism. [source Villa Media]

PVV feared Fitna might become fatal to the party

PVV leader Geert Wilders took into account the possibility that the release of the anti-Islam film Fitna (2008) might be fatal to his growing party. So says Martin Bosma, Wilders’ second-in-command and a PVV MP, in the Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad. Due to the heavy pressure under which he and Geert Wilders had to function, the “survival of the whole operation” — to build up the PVV — was at stake, according to him. “While Geert on his nights off was putting together a movie, the head of the UN interfered with it. Given the many incidents, it could have turned out quite differently,” Bosma says. The PVV, for example, feared a lawsuit, a ban on the party, and a major claim.

Political scientist and former journalist Martin Bosma is regarded as the thinker of the PVV group. He writes [many of] Wilders’ speeches and was the campaign leader for the elections. This week he published the book The Pseudo-Elite of the Counterfeiters, a title Bosma borrowed from the social democrat [and considered a conservative intellectual] Jacques Kadt (1897-1988). Bosma writes that Wilders, during a discussion about whether or not they should release Fitna, finally said: “This is exactly why we are here. Even if we in the end are left with one seat [in parliament], this simply is our job.”

Bosma argues that the “leftist elite” since the blow of the “Marxist carousel” in ‘68 has become blind to the dangers of Islam. He draws a comparison with Communism and Nazism. “The only people who have been acquitted by history are those who ruthlessly have spoken out against this.” He writes that you never know if a moderate Muslim shows his true nature. “In Islam there is the phenomenon of taqiyya. Both to Shiites and Sunnis is given the task — not just the option, but really the mission — to conceal their true intentions.” [source NRC]

Martin Bosma: Hitler was a socialist

Martin Bosma also wants to prove that Hitler was a socialist, as he said in an interview with the [left-wing] newspaper De Volkskrant. According to Bosma, the extreme right does not exist. “What they call extreme right is simply a form of socialism.” He does not want to say that National Socialism is equal to the Labour Party. “I just wanted to prove that National Socialism is a form of socialism, and thus a left-wing stream.” In his book The Pseudo-Elite of the Counterfeiters Bosma shows how the political streams “left” and “right” have “changed places”. [source De Volkskrant]

Photo caption: Hans Jansen shakes hands with Mickel Aziz, the tram ticket inspector who was forbidden by the public transport company in Amsterdam to wear his necklace with a cross. He was officially presented a copy of Martin Bosma’s book “The Pseudo-Elite of the Counterfeiters”.

Below is the speech by the Arabist Hans Jansen at the book-launch on Wednesday September 29, 2010, as published on the Dutch Blog HoeiBoei and translated by VH:

Speech by Hans Jansen at the book-launch The Pseudo-Elite of the Counterfeiters of Martin Bosma

September 29, 2010, old assembly room of the Dutch Parliament, Binnenhof, The Hague

For my information I am largely dependent on the state broadcaster, so maybe I’m completely wrong, but if I understood it correctly, yesterday, Tuesday, October 28, 2010, it was D-Day for the Netherlands. A great deal of struggle will follow on from D-Day, possibly even the rivers of blood Enoch Powell predicted, but the turning point in this struggle is on this beautiful moment one day behind us.

But today we want to keep our thoughts far from the difficulties that lie ahead, because it is feast due to the release of the magnificent book by Martin Bosma.

In my student days we had never heard of Job Cohen [former mayor of Amsterdam, party leader of the PvdA (Labour Party, Socialists)]. Yet back then we sang a wonderful song, of which the opening lines were “On Socialists, close the rows, the red flag we follow, it’s somewhat worn by the years, it now has the color of weak tea [slappe thee].”

Weak tea indeed. The Netherlands since the sixties has been saddled with a tea-colored, orange-red elite that brings harm to the people of this country. Our first task is hold a mirror up to this elite.

This elite and its auxiliaries [hulptroepen] are not happy about that. Anyone who, like Theo van Gogh and Pim Fortuyn, demonstrates that he does not swallow their fables and fabrications as sweet cake runs great risks.

It is — as we all actually already realize — about an elite who deeply hates it when someone holds up a mirror to them, an elite which in private circles is up to a lot more than just some tea-drinking. It is about an elite that is also resentful, because nothing hurts the rulers as much as the loss of a portion of their power.

It should therefore be welcomed that Martin Bosma in a bright, sharp and legible way managed to put into words exactly what it is about, between that elite and the Netherlands. In order to remain in power, the false elite makes use of ideological counterfeiting, and that can go on well enough for a long while, but counterfeiting does not work once the counterfeit notes are held against the light.

In his superb book, for page after page Martin focuses the spotlight on the humbug that is sprinkled over us on a daily basis, and that humbug can not withstand this.

The approximately one and a half million people who voted for the PVV will want to buy Martin’s book, to have at hand at weddings and parties the well-documented reasonable arguments one needs to defend his political affiliations. But even if only half of all PVV voters buy the book, in a few months Martin will be a modestly well-off man.

And that he well deserves, and alas, most of it will go to the taxman anyway, you should think, and can then be used for grants for artistic dance or windmills in the North Sea or to one of those other projects of the Green Khmer, or maybe also for a visit by Sheikh al-Qaradawi to the Sultanate of Amsterdam-West.^[2]

I consider be brave of Mai Spijkers from the publisher Bert Bakker / Prometheus, that he published the book by Martin Bosma. That Mai Spijkers is a weird man, but this now has made him appear sympathetic to me. I but hope that his publishing house made use of the beneficial discount offered for steel shutters which was recently advertised on the website of the PVV.

When lived in Egypt, I used to regularly visit Islamic preachers, to ask these gentlemen stupid questions. One of those devout men one day said to me: “Oh, you know, Mr. Jansen, I regularly have Western journalists visiting here. Often I ask them if they also find that the Qur’an and the Bible actually are exactly the same. If they answer with “yes”, then I’m sure they have not read a letter of either book.”

That Islamic preacher understood it better than the professional Islam-watchers Islam of the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, or of those of the established Dutch political parties.

However, perhaps the established political parties find Islam not important enough even to be watched. For religion — as the elite of the left-church believes with enviable cheerfulness — constitutes but gibberish. Well, I have a bad message: Religion is not gibberish. There is not a single act someone somewhere has not committed, or refrained from committing, because they believed their religion required it of them. On just about anything you can come up with, there will be a religion somewhere that prohibits or imposes it.

The Netherlands has become part of a multicultural superstate called the ‘European Union’. The ideology of multiculturalism teaches not only that persons are equal and equivalent, but also collectives: all forms of societies and religions must be of equal value, as this ideology claims. At the universities, uncounted hours are spent convincing students that societies which can not even purify their own sewage are equal to ours.

But before the Netherlands became part of the European multicultural utopian state, this country actually knew at least three mottos. The proud Je maintiendrai, ‘I will persist’ [or ‘I will stand firm’], and the optimistic Luctor et Emergo, ‘To struggle and emerge’, and the somewhat sentimental den vaderland getrouwe [‘loyalty to the fatherland’, a line in the Dutch anthem — translator]. It’s not such a good idea to replace these three mottos with the multicultural blindfold on which is written in headline type; wir haben es nicht gewusst [German for “we were not aware (of it)”].

After all, to find out what a religion prescribes on the treatment of women, children, homosexuals and religious minorities; or to find out what a religion prescribes about power, human rights, legislation, war, violence and assassination, is not at all that difficult. An appeal to ignorance is not valid here. Such an appeal to ignorance is not only ridiculous, it also is immoral.

When you allow me, I will make an allusion here to the Hebrew motto of Martin’s great book: You can only continue to refer to “darkness” as “light” when you tie your blinders firmly across your nose. Let the book of Martin Bosma serve us, yes, serve the Netherlands to ever further untie that ridiculous orange-red multicultural blindfold.

— Hans Jansen

Notes:

[1]		“Drees”: Willem Drees was the post war prime minister (1948-58) and sober Social Democrat, who quit his membership of the PvdA [Labour Party] in 1971 due to his distaste for the taking over of the party by the post -’68 New Left, which he considered “too radical, unrealistic and spendthrift”. Already in 1974 he warned strongly about the effects of the then still relatively limited mass immigration: “If one considered foreign workers to be essential, one should have restricted this to short term contracts with unmarried workers, or workers who were prepared to stay here for a short time without their families.” In 1982 Drees repeated his warnings: “The Netherlands in many respects started to do things that had a humanitarian character, but became too much of a burden for the Dutch people. With its overpopulation and all that high unemployment, the Netherlands could not afford these things.”
[2]		See also: “A Proposal for a Muslim Township” [GoV] and “More on Amsterdam’s Islamized Township” [GoV].

Cem Gülay is a Turkish-German author who sometimes appears in TV discussions. In the clip below he is referring to Thilo Sarrazin’s book, among other things.

Many thanks to maggieTh for the transcript, to the Counterjihad Collective for the translation, and to Vlad Tepes for the subtitling:

Is this fellow threatening the German people with ethnic violence if they continue to support German nationalists? Or is he just mouthing off?

You decide.

Here’s the transcript of the subtitles:

Eh, if you guys, if the people want to fight this fight in this way, then they will lose.

Because right-wing populism has never led to anything, we’ve known that for the past centuries.

This will cause even more aversion, more hatred, also hatred against the Germans.

And if the migrants are in the majority in the next 10-20 years, if they remain at this level, this level of education, then you will get your additional dead and wounded.

The owners of Brandos, a chain of Swedish shoe stores, are doing their part to combat racism and intolerance in Sweden. The two gentlemen have publicly informed anyone who voted for Sverigedemokraterna (the Sweden Democrats) that they are not welcome in Brandos stores.

Cavatus has more:

…they say that SD-voters (340,000 persons) are not welcome as customers in their shops. What they neglected is that they have shops in several European countries where far more right-wing parties have got far more votes than the Sweden Democrats; countries where the immigration policy is far more restricted that the immigration policy in Sweden. These countries have in fact an immigration policy which is the one that the SD strive for.

Here’s the video from Brandos:

There is a movement to boycott Brandos over this issue. See the post at Cavatus’ blog.

Hat tip: Tony.

A major union for healthcare professionals in Sweden has said that it will not admit active members of the Sweden Democrats. The union says that the principles of the party — which opposes mass immigration and Islamization — are not compatible with the inclusive caring nature of its profession.

In other news, the Great War is finally over. Germany just paid off the last of the interest on bonds it issued decades ago when it resumed paying reparations under the Treaty of Versailles. Ninety-two years after the end of the war, the payment of reparations is finally complete.

To see the headlines and the articles, open the full news post.

Thanks to Anne-Kit, Barry Rubin, C. Cantoni, DF, EMBW, Fjordman, Gaia, GF, heroyalwhyness, Insubria, JD, JP, Kitman, Lurker from Tulsa, Nilk, TV, Vlad Tepes, and all the other tipsters who sent these in.

Commenters are advised to leave their comments at this post (rather than with the news articles) so that they are more easily accessible.

Caveat: Articles in the news feed are posted “as is”. Gates of Vienna cannot vouch for the authenticity or accuracy of the contents of any individual item posted here. We check each entry to make sure it is relatively interesting, not patently offensive, and at least superficially plausible. The link to the original is included with each item’s title. Further research and verification are left to the reader.

In one of his essays a couple of years ago, El Inglés coined the phrase “deranged altruism” to describe the apparently suicidal policies practiced by virtually all Western nations. Our countries have deliberately imported millions of inassimilable foreigners, many (or most) of whom are either criminal, or indolent, or both. The new residents are showered with uncountable billions of euros, pounds, kroner, francs, and dollars — an investment which can never possibly pay for itself, no matter how many generations we wait.

A close cultural cousin to deranged altruism is an impulse that might be labeled “toxic tolerance”. This is the imperative never to offend anyone, no matter how evil, duplicitous, or exploitative they might be. We are brought up to be nice at all costs, so that the impulse to be accommodating and generous to those who do not deserve it — even when it is patently dangerous to do so — is acted upon with almost no conscious deliberation. Muslims, with their long tradition of scripturally-prescribed dishonesty, are especially adept at manipulating and exploiting our toxic tolerance.

A selection of articles collected for tonight’s news feed reminded me of the two faces of toxic tolerance. The first group illustrates the decayed self-confidence and lack of guts displayed by Westerners when faced with the demands of the culture enrichers.

From The Sydney Morning Herald:

Danish MP Meets Muslims Over Cartoons

Denmark’s foreign minister on Wednesday met ambassadors of 17 Muslim countries ahead of the publication of a book on controversial cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed, the ministry said.

The meeting came five years after they were first published in a Danish daily.

Lene Espersen’s meeting with the ambassadors took place in a bid to defuse tensions with Muslim countries, a day before the fifth anniversary of the Jylland[s]-Posten newspaper’s publication of the cartoons that sparked outrage across the Muslim world.

[…]

The meeting was aimed at preventing new protests against Denmark and Danish interests over the publication on Thursday of the book written by Flemming Rose, who was Jyllands-Posten’s cultural editor when it published the 12 cartoons on September 30, 2005.

There’s no discussion of imposing draconian punishments on immigrant malefactors who violate public order, even though this policy would act as a means of prevention. There’s no possibility of consigning the violent punks to a cold concrete cell for decades and forcing them to subsist on weevil-ridden biscuits — not to mention deporting them at the first sign of insolent disorder.

The only available choice requires being nice, which involves — you guessed it! — “dialogue”, the favorite remedy of the terminally nice:

The minister met ambassadors from 17 Muslim countries, including Algeria, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia and Iran, Klavs Holm, the Danish ambassador for public diplomacy, said.

“It was a good meeting, a good atmosphere,” he said.

[…]

“The Danish government respects all creeds and religious communities, including Isla[m]… and all peoples’ religious sensibilities,” [Lene Espersen] added.

Or take the following example from England. The Harrow Times reports:

Harrow Council Urges Schools to Consider Non-Halal Meat Option

HARROW Council has urged all headteachers in the borough to consider a non-Halal meat option in schools.

Angry parents and religious leaders have accused schools of ignoring the rights of non-Muslim parents and their children by making Halal the only meat option in secondary schools.

Notice that the Harrow Council can only “urge” — that is, it is reduced to begging for the same consideration to be shown to “persons of English background” that is routinely lavished upon Muslim residents without a second thought.

The council, as the education authority, has soaked up much of the criticism despite saying it has no power over what schools serve at lunch. [emphasis added]

The council — the elected body which theoretically governs local affairs in Harrow — has no power over what food is served in schools.

Yet local Muslims somehow have the power to demand — and receive — what they insist is their right.

Funny about that.

The best the English natives can hope for is “serious consideration”:

“That means giving serious consideration to offering an alternative menu with non-Halal meat, which offers choice to all faith and interest groups.

“This will help schools focus on ensuring that all children across Harrow have access to healthy and nutritious school meals.”

Health and nutrition are the only metrics allowed. No culture, no tradition, no rights for the indigenes. Just utilitarian calculations about bodily well-being.

The Sikhs are spearheading the resistance:

Sikh representative Paramjit Singh Kohli announced the launch of a petition over the policy last week, and said he will try to collect as many as 2m signatures from across the UK.

Schools also provide vegetarian and fish options but those who oppose the scheme say this is not enough.

Mr Kohli told the Harrow Times in September: “Fish and vegetarian dishes are not the alternative, the alternative is non-halal meat. Those dishes are for the people who are vegetarian and vegan.”

Harrow Central Mosque did not back the decision, saying it was grateful for the Halal option but other faith groups should be considered as well.

Ghulam Rabbani said he was concerned people might think the council was doing favours for the Muslim community.

D’you think? Is it really possible that the council has been doing favors for the Muslims?

Nah — there must be some other explanation.

Leaving the niceness of England, we travel on to uniquely nice Sweden, which has refined tolerance to a baroque level unsurpassed by any other Western country. Nobody can be nicer than the Swedes.

According to The Local:

A Swedish man charged with public urination has been acquitted by a Stockholm court, opening the door for thousands of others to avoid fines for heeding the call of nature in public.

[…]

In throwing out the charges against the 45-year-old, the Nacka District Court cited a previous appeals court ruling in which a man was acquitted because he didn’t intend to offend anyone when he unzipped his trousers. [emphasis added]

This story provides some insight into how our societies have become so degraded. Not offending people has become the sum and substance of the law. Offending others — or, in this case, intending to offend others — defines what is right and wrong. No other measurement is allowed. Any absolute definitions of right and wrong are discriminatory, and hence not nice. Only the giving or taking of offense may be considered.

Since everything an infidel says or does offends Muslims, we are wrong, wrong, wrong for doing it. Therefore we must be nice, nice, nice until they are no longer offended.

And what about the other face of tolerance? How nice are Muslims?

According to the Straits Times, not all that nice, and getting less nice all the time.

Rising Intolerance Among Muslims

JAKARTA — INDONESIA’S Muslim majority has become less tolerant over the past decade and the government of President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono is turning a blind eye to the problem, researchers said on Wednesday.

A new survey by the Centre for the Study of Islam and Society found ‘a worrying increase’ in religious intolerance among Muslims in 2010 compared to 2001.

Centre chief Jajat Burhanudin said certain ministers in Mr Yudhoyono’s cabinet actively encouraged intolerance, while the police too often failed to protect minority groups.

‘If this continues, the process of democracy in this country will be disrupted as people will justify their acts in the name of Islam,’ he said.

As a concrete example of Indonesian intolerance, we have the reaction of the Islamic Defender Front to a gay film festival in Jakarta. It seems that the opening event had to be cancelled, due to threats of violence. According to Asia News:

Muslim Fundamentalists Against Gay and Lesbian Film Festival in Jakarta

Islamic Defender Front threatens to set fire to one of the venues of the festival. Opening day is cancelled.

Jakarta (AsiaNews) — A gay and lesbian film festival might be cancelled because of threats made by radical Islamic groups. The Q! Film Festival was scheduled to end on 30 September, but its director, John Badalu, called off the festival’s opening day (25 September). At least 100 members of the Islamic Defender Front (FPI) protested against the event, which is at its ninth edition, in front of Germany’s Goethe-Institut, one of the venues.

According to a FPI field coordinator, Habib Salim Alatas, “These places should be protected from any obscenity. I will let these places be burned down (by our members) because they promote obscenity”.

But the police are determined to enforce niceness:

Police is also on alert to ensure that protests by radical Muslims remain “polite”.

The Guardian has more details:

In the past, the Islamic Defenders Front has smashed bars, attacked transvestites and targeted other groups it considers blasphemous with bamboo clubs and stones. Indonesia, a secular country of 237 million people, has more Muslims than any other country in the world. Though most are moderate and oppose violence, a small extremist fringe has become more vocal in recent years. [emphasis added]

“[M]ost are moderate and oppose violence”.

How do we know that’s true?

Who determined this to be a fact?

What metric was used? Where are the details of the statistical survey that demonstrated this “fact”?

The Guardian is not going to tell us. We are required to take it on faith.

The assertion that most Muslims are moderate and peaceful is part of the catechism memorized by the devotees of the socialist Left. It cannot be questioned. It doesn’t have to be proved, it just is.

But what if it isn’t? What if the vast majority of Muslims who really believe in their religion also support, at least tacitly, the idea of killing homosexuals and stoning adulteresses?

What will we do then?

Niceness isn’t going to cut it. We are going to have to give up our dangerous addiction to being nice.

As I have said before, we are in the process of tolerating ourselves to death.

Hat tips: DF, C. Cantoni, and heroyalwhyness.

The radical Islamic organization Hizb ut-Tahrir is holding a conference this coming Sunday in Denmark. It’s targeted at all Scandinavian Muslims, and the theme is “The Role of Muslims in the West”.

The promotional video below explains the nature of the conference, which aims to motivate Muslims who live in Western societies to become more politically engaged. You’ll notice that the organizers make no secret of their long-term intentions: their initial goal is to restore Khilafah, or the Caliphate, to majority Muslim countries, where rightful Islamic governance has been usurped by corrupt tyrants. After that Khilafah will be spread to the rest of the world — that is, the entire globe will convert to Islam and be coterminous with the Ummah.

Hizb ut-Tahrir exhorts Muslims not to assimilate, to forswear integration, and to resist the temptation to adopt decadent Western ways. Democracy is a corrupting influence which must be avoided and eventually eliminated.

As has often been pointed out in this space, Islam is not hiding its intentions or its methodology. It’s all laid out here where anyone can see it.

Many thanks to Vlad Tepes for YouTubing this video:

The imposition of sharia in the West is being accomplished through a variety of methods in a mixture of “carrot” and “stick” approaches. As the concentration of Muslims within any given area grows larger, the carrot tends to disappear and the stick becomes predominant.

In the early stages of Islamization, the carrots are subtle messages delivered by friendly, seemingly innocuous spokesmen like Imam Rauf. They appeal to Westerners’ sense of basic decency and tolerance, and gain concessions from people who have been trained above all else to be nice.

This is how halal food gets into the school system and municipal swimming pools decide to segregate the sexes.

The stick emerges when there are enough Muslims in the neighborhood to make trouble. Then the Islamic talking heads appear on television and tell us that although they personally abhor violence, when Muslims feel that Islam has been insulted, they tend to become angry. At that point some unspecified subset of them may react violently, and there really isn’t anything that more reasonable Muslims can do about it, unfortunately.

This is when free speech begins to be suppressed — newspapers and magazines self-censor, print editions of books are recalled and destroyed, and “Islamophobic” artists and writers are prosecuted under hate speech laws.

The final stage, which might appropriately be called the “Big Stick”, arrives when the Muslim population passes a local tipping point — generally a proportion of about 20% to 30%. At that point there are so many potentially violent and lawless “youths” available to assault, burn, loot, and rape, that law enforcement is unable to control them, and the rule of law disappears in Muslim-dominated enclaves.

This is how full sharia arrives in the West.

The “Big Stick” is already in operation in a number of Muslim ghettos in Western Europe. One of the most notorious such areas is the city of Malmö in southern Sweden, where certain neighborhoods — notably the Rosengård district — are off-limits to the forces of Swedish law and order.

The latest example of sharia in Malmö may be found in this news story from The Local, which describes how Malmö’s culture enrichers have threatened a judge into withdrawing from a criminal case. The enrichers no doubt feel themselves justified in their intimidation, since their actions — the pimping and rape of a 14-year-old retarded girl — do not constitute a crime under sharia law, and sharia is ascendant in Rosengård:

Threats Force Judge Out of Teen Pimping Trial

The presiding judge in the Malmö district court trial of ten men suspected of having sold a mentally handicapped 14-year-old girl for sex, has been forced to withdraw due to threats against her and her family.

Monica Nebelius, who was appointed to lead the proceedings when the trial of the ten men was due to start last week, was replaced by Björn Hansson when the trial eventually opened on Monday.

It was reported that Nebelius had been taken ill and would not be able to proceed with the assignment. But the judge has now confirmed that in fact it was threats directed against her which caused her to accede to police advice and withdraw.

“It was directed against both myself and my family. I can’t live at home at the moment,” Nebelius told the TT news agency.

Nebelius was unwilling to go into further detail over the threats, except to say that she is in receipt of continual updates from the police and hopes that she will be able to return to work at the district court as a soon as possible.

“I presume that I will be back at work as soon as possible. It is a just a question of getting going, there is no more to it than that,” she said.

Nebelius is not alone among those involved in the case who have been on the receiving end of threats. The prosecutor Ulrika Rogland has been assigned bodyguards.

The high-profile trial opened to tumultuous scenes, and the head of the district court, Eva Wendel Rosberg, had to impose tight security around the court and the surrounding area on Stortorget in central Malmö.

The replacement judge, Björn Hansson, has been assigned a police escort to and from the court.

Eva Wendel Rosberg confirmed the information regarding Monica Nebelius on Tuesday morning.

“I can now confirm that there was a threatening situation after the first day of deliberations for Monica Nebelius. I did not want to publicise this initially due primarily to security reasons, but also for the sake of the parties concerned,” she told the local Sydsvenskan daily.

The trial concerns allegations that the 14-year-old girl was sexually abused and raped by several different men after she ran away from a foster home in a nearby municipality last March before ending up in the Rosengård district of Malmö.

Although she is 14-years-old she is reported to have the mental age of a girl several years younger.

Five of the men have been charged with trafficking or assisting in human trafficking, and eight for rape. All of the suspects are men aged 16- to 67-years-old. Several of the men have admitted to having sex with the girl, but claim that they thought that she was much older.

The case is also significant because it represents the first time that prosecutors in Sweden have attempted to classify pimping crimes as human trafficking.

This is the way sharia arrives — sometimes with a bang, sometimes with a whimper, but always relentlessly, without giving the infidel a moment’s respite. Resisting it is dangerous, time-consuming, and expensive. Eventually, out of sheer exhaustion, the native population gives in to the demands of its Muslim guests.

This is how the Big Stick ushers in the reign of sharia in Sweden.

For a complete listing of previous enrichment news, see The Cultural Enrichment Archives.

Hat tip: Fjordman.

A major Islamic terrorist plot originating in Pakistan and aimed at various European cities has been disrupted by the joint efforts of the intelligence services of the USA, the UK, France, and Germany. The terrorists were planning a “Mumbai style” attack, but a number of the leaders of the group have been killed. It is not clear whether any alleged would-be perpetrators have been arrested.

In other news, Tonight Show host Jay Leno referred to Brian Cowen, the prime minister of Ireland, as a “drunken moron”. The epithet was prompted by a photo of the Taoiseach taken during an appearance on an early-morning Irish TV news program. It seems that Mr. Cowen had stayed up a bit late the night before, having — ahem — a good time. Although he may no longer have been drunk when the photo was taken, the camera did not catch him at his best. The incident is known in Ireland as “Garglegate”.

To see the headlines and the articles, open the full news post.

Thanks to C. Cantoni, DF, Freedom Fighter, Gaia, ICLA, Insubria, JD, McR, TB, TV, and all the other tipsters who sent these in.

Commenters are advised to leave their comments at this post (rather than with the news articles) so that they are more easily accessible.

Caveat: Articles in the news feed are posted “as is”. Gates of Vienna cannot vouch for the authenticity or accuracy of the contents of any individual item posted here. We check each entry to make sure it is relatively interesting, not patently offensive, and at least superficially plausible. The link to the original is included with each item’s title. Further research and verification are left to the reader.

The Netherlands has been without a government for the last three months, ever since the general election which added fifteen seats to the Party for Freedom’s parliamentary presence. The vote also catapulted Geert Wilders to the position of kingmaker among the various establishment parties that have up until now continuously and publicly reviled him.

Three months without a government is a long time, but other countries in the same situation have gone on even longer. Iraq, for example, is still without a government seven months after a parliamentary election. And it seems like forever since Belgium had anything more than a caretaker government — I can’t even remember the last real government in Brussels (not counting the EU, of course).

And this current VVD/CDU coalition may not pan out — we have, after all, had previous false alarms. But if the left wing of the CDU doesn’t bolt again, this one may actually happen. Here’s the news from Reuters:

Dutch Agree Coalition With Anti-Islam Party Support

AMSTERDAM, Sept 28 (Reuters) — Two Dutch parties agreed on Tuesday to form a coalition, with support from a far-right party [the PVV] whose leader [Geert Wilders] is on trial for inciting hatred against Muslims, and its main task will be to implement austerity measures.

Notice that the PVV — which in an American context would be slightly to the left of, say, John Kerry on everything but immigration and Islam — is labeled “far-right”. Anybody who opposes Islamization, no matter how socialist he might be on other issues, is always called a “right-wing extremist”. If he happens also to use a phrase like “Dutch identity”, “Flemish rights”, “Swedish values”, or “the ancient liberties of Englishmen”, he is automatically promoted to the rank of “neo-fascist” or “crypto-Nazi”.

The article continues:

The parliamentary leaders of the VVD Liberal Party and CDA Christian Democrats reached agreement to form a minority government, the first in the Netherlands since 1939, with support in parliament from the anti-Islam PVV Freedom Party.

“We have just put the finishing touches on the agreements that will give form to our political co-operation,” VVD leader Mark Rutte said on Dutch public broadcaster NOS.

“I’m so happy that we have come so far.”

The VVD won most votes in the June elections on an austerity platform that found wide acceptance among voters worried about an anaemic economy, a major pension problem and reverberations from the debt crisis in Greece.

Not mentioned is the fact that the VVD and the CDU would not fare so well if elections were held again today, according to the latest polls. The two “center-right” parties are well-advised to grab their chance while they can, because if another election has to be called, Geert Wilders will probably be dealt an even stronger hand.

But efforts to create a majority cabinet stumbled on differences over spending policy, and markets will be closely watching for hints on how fast the new government plans to press ahead with spending cuts.

Rutte said two agreements reached on Tuesday will be presented to party colleagues on Wednesday, one outlining the government pact and the other outlining the minority support.

The VVD and the CDA plan to govern with support in parliament from the PVV, which has called Islam a backwards religion and said the ‘islamisation’ of the Netherlands needs to be stopped.

Freedom Party leader Geert Wilders said the coalition deal would prove “fantastic” for the Netherlands.

“There will be a historic policy, which will be very different on various matters,” he said.

If Mr. Wilders is enthusiastic about this new government, chances are that we’ll be in for some interesting times in the next few months.

Keep your eye on the Netherlands.

Hat tip: DF.

Below is the latest of an occasional series of essays by Anestos Canelides. The current piece concerns the barbaric Turkish institution of devshirme, which was practiced for centuries by the Ottomans against the conquered people of the Balkans.

Devshirme: A Muslim Scourge on Christians
by Anestos Canelides

We as a people, whether in Greece or the USA, should not forget our history, especially when it comes to Islam.

About year ago, in the name of political correctness Greek textbooks referred to the Ottoman occupation of the Greeks as the “Ottoman administration”. The reference was quickly retracted after a loud uproar from many Greeks, because the Ottoman interlude was much more than an administration, and the occupation brought upon the Christian Greeks centuries of cruel oppression.

One institution of such oppression practiced by the Turks was called Devshirme, or the practice of recruiting the best and brightest children, usually males, from Christian families, and forcing them to convert to Islam. These children were trained in the Sultan’s civil service, or they become part of an elite fighting force known as the Janissaries. From very inception of this institution the Christian population grievously resented the abduction of their children.

The great historian Leopold Von Ranke wrote that the first heroic song by Christos Melionis rang out throughout the mountains in Greece only after the traumatic practice of Devshirme was ended, and it was only long after it was over that it brought about revolt throughout the Balkans. ¹

The Sultan inducted into his service children who had fallen into his hands either by purchase, or by outright abduction by recruiters from their families. Author Andre Gerolymatos writes about the barbaric practice of Devshirme in The Balkan Wars:

The cruel practice in what today can be called brain cleansing of the Christian population of the Ottoman Empire is perhaps the most inhuman Turkish legacy. The advantage gained by those chosen for conversion and a better life in Constantinople cannot militate against the odium of taking children away from their parents. ²

The Ottomans would send agents into villages to exact this tribute, thus depriving these villages of their strongest and most intelligent children, and making the Devshirme agents the most hated manifestation of Turkish rule. “The memory of these men continues to stigmatize the Turks in the Balkans.” ³

It is easy to understand the traumatic tone in surviving Greek literature from that period. For the parents this was a heartbreaking loss, and the complete transformation of their children, who were forced to turn away from their Christian faith, was devastating. The Tubingen manuscript written by Andre Argyros and John Tholoites in the 16th century vividly reveals the trauma that the parents went through.

You understand my lords and Christian gentlemen, what sorrow the Greeks bear, the fathers and mothers who are separated from their children at the prime of life. Think ye of the heart-rending sorrow! How many mothers scratch their out their cheeks! How many father beat their breasts with stones! What grief these Christians experience on account of their children who are separated from them while alive and how many mothers say, “It would be better to see them dead and buried in our church, rather than to take them alive in order to become Turks and abjure our faith. Better that you had died. ⁴

The sad fact is that while many Janissaries were Greek, their conversion and adherence to Islam forever severed them from any Hellenic consciousness or connection with Greek society. ⁵ The Christian population throughout the Balkans, resented the recruitment of the children and it was often carried out by force. Those who would not submit and surrender the most healthiest, the most handsome, and the most intelligent children faced stiff penalties. Parents who refused were immediately put to death by hanging.

Since there was no way to escape this recruitment, some Christians fled their villages to certain cities which enjoyed exemption from this tax. They also fled to Venetian-held territories to seek a safe haven, and this resulted in the depopulation of the countryside. Families often sent their children to hide in the mountains or in the homes of Turkish officials friendly to Greeks. Some children ran away on their own initiative, but when they found out their parents had been arrested and were being tortured, they quickly returned and surrendered themselves to the authorities.

In some cases Greek parents would exchange their children for Turkish children. Since only Christian children could be recruited, this gave Turkish families the hope that their child would attain a successful career as either a Janissary or in civil service. ⁶ A few Christian families also saw this as an opportunity for their children, but vast majority resisted the theft of their offspring.

Why Devshirme?

Greeks and other people of the Balkans usually resisted the conquest of their lands, and therefore faced the fate of the conquered, which was determined according to the principles of the Qur’an. This meant they were either killed, compelled to convert to Islam or required to pay the so-called protection tax. If they paid the protection tax (also called the jizya), they could keep their faith but were relegated to the status of a second-class citizens. If the population willfully surrendered they were granted selected privileges. ⁷ “The fact that the Ottomans, in the case of voluntary surrender, conceded certain privileges, one of which was exemption from this heavy burden, indicates that its measure was understood as a penalization for the resistance of the population and the devshirme was an expression of the perpetuation of the state of war between the conqueror and the conquered.” ⁸

The recruitment of children took place every three to four years and at times even annually, according to the needs of the Sultan. The largest loss of children coincided with the peak of Ottoman expansion in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries under the rule of Selim I and Suleyman the Magnificent.

This brutal abduction of Christian children continued into the seventeenth century, but it lost its importance. Occasional recruitment took place until the rebellion of 1705, and perhaps even later, but it had a lasting effect on the Christian population for many years beyond its time. “Finally, though a final consideration of the total losses is impossible, there is no doubt that this heavy burden was one of the hardest tribulations of the Christian population.” ⁹ In time Muslim Turks were recruited in place of Christian children. Even after this institution ended, the anger continued to seethe, and eventually led to the revolution which gave Greece its independence in 1821.

While most modern Turks would be appalled at this inhuman treatment of Christians today, it must not be forgotten or covered up out of political correctness. With the threat of the Islamization of Europe and the Americas, it is a lesson that must not be overlooked.

Can history repeat itself? Yes, it can. And, unless Islam reforms, it will.

Anestos Canelides has a master’s degree in history from Eastern Washington University, and lives in Arizona.

Notes:

1		Papaloulia, Vasiliki. The Legacy of Jihad —The Impact of Devshirme on Greek Society. Prometheus Books.
2		Gerolymatos, Andre. The Balkan Wars. Basic books, New York, p 63
3		Ibid., p 63
4		Papaloulia, Vasiliki. The Legacy of Jihad —The Impact of Devshirme on Greek Society. Prometheus Books
5		Gerolymatos, Andre. The Balkan Wars. Basic books, New York, p 63
6		Papaloulia, Vasiliki. The Legacy of Jihad —The Impact of Devshirme on Greek Society. Prometheus Books
7		Ibid., p 560-561
8		Ibid., p 560-561
9		Ibid., p 560-561

Previous posts by Anestos Canelides:

2010		May		29		The Last Empire
		Jun		18		The Muslim Devastation of India
		Aug		20		Are They Lying to Us?