A Rosetta Tombstone

Col. West in Russian


A number of people have written in the last few days to ask what happened to the subtitled videos of Col. Allen West’s speech on February 19th at the launch of the Freedom Defense Initiative.

As most readers will remember, immediately after the FDI event, Vlad Tepes and I mounted a Rosetta Stone project to subtitle Col. West’s speech in as many languages as possible. Our Rosetta Stone team did the translations, and then Vlad subtitled the videos and uploaded them to Vimeo. Over a two-month period the speech was made available in a total of fifteen languages.

Rosetta TombstoneThe videos remained online until a few days ago, when someone — presumably the organizers of the event or the videographer — complained to Vimeo that their copyright on the Col. West videos had been violated. Vimeo responded by taking down Vlad’s entire channel — eliminating many other useful and important videos along with those of Col. West.

We know that Allen West himself had no problem with our project, since he sent us a number of emails thanking us for the subtitled videos and praising our efforts.

All of the videos and posts linked lavishly to both FDI and the organizers, and we would have linked the videographer if we could have discovered his or her name. No one sent us any complaints or requests to take down the videos — for two months they were available for viewing, and then suddenly they were gone.

This action was unfortunate and destructive. And it’s not just the sad waste of hundreds of man-hours; the translated versions of Col. West’s speech helped his words escape beyond the borders of the United States. They let the world know that Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton do not represent us, that America has capable leaders who understand the global threat presented by Islam. Col. West’s words inspired people in Denmark, Russia, France, and at least twelve other countries.

Our work has not been lost entirely, however, because the time-stamped translations are still available — along with the defunct videos — at the original posts. For example, you can read the Dutch and Italian here, or the Hebrew and German here.

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Our Rosetta Stone projects, both text and video, will continue. The next time we commit all those hours to a video operation, we’ll make sure to get advance permission from anyone who might claim copyright.

One of the Rosetta Stone text projects is still ongoing: Geert Wilders’ speech at the House of Lords in London on March 5th. There are three languages remaining, and they will be posted sometime in the next few days. We’re fortunate that Mr. Wilders doesn’t object to our publishing his translated words.

Now I’d like to celebrate the Rosetta Stone team.
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Over the last two years it has grown to include roughly sixty translators and two video wizards. Vlad and Kitman handle the editing, subtitling, uploading, and maintenance of the video channels. Together they run Counterjihad Films — which unfortunately has been decimated by the loss of Vimeo.

Below is a list of active translators, to whom we owe a profound debt of gratitude for their tireless efforts. This list was compiled somewhat hastily, so please contact me if I left anybody out:

Albanian   Ilia Toli, Ph.D.   Hungarian   DC
Bulgarian   Georgi Dimitrov       Somogyi Zoltan
Czech   Czech Infidel       Zoltan
    Margita   Italian   Gaia
    Marian CZ   Japanese   Jiraiya
Danish   Anne-Kit   Norwegian   Kepiblanc
    Henrik Ræder Clausen       HTP
    Kepiblanc       Jun Girl
    Kitman       Zylark
    Signe   Polish   GeKo
    TB       Green Infidel
    Zonka       Joonas
Dutch   Bolleke   Portuguese   Luigi
    H. Numan       MJF
    Michiel Mans       Rui
    VH   Romanian   Armance
Finnish   KGS       Costin
    Markus       Rebellious Vanilla
    Vasarahammer   Russian   DarLink
French   François       Peter1
    Gandalf of VV&D   Serbian   Gray Falcon
    l’échappée belle       Witch-King of Angmar
    Robert Marchenoir   Spanish   Llew
German   ESW   Swedish   Cavatus
    JLH       Kepiblanc
    Kepiblanc       Henrik W.
    Liz       LN
Hebrew   DarLink       Peter L.
        Tagalog   UC
        Welsh   Saxeus

It is truly an honor to co-ordinate the work of so many dedicated and selfless people who volunteer to work long hours in the cause of liberty.

My heartfelt thanks to the entire team.

Gates of Vienna News Feed 4/27/2010

Gates of Vienna News Feed 4/27/2010The financial crisis in Europe continues to intensify. Greek bonds have been downgraded to junk status, and the government says that if it does not get aid, it might go down the tubes. Portugal is also headed into trouble: its bonds have been downgraded, and both credit default swaps and yields on bonds have reached levels not seen since the 1990s. Spain’s real estate market has picked up, but Prime Minister Zapatero warns that his country’s unemployment level remains alarmingly high.

In other news, Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas says that NATO troops could be deployed to guarantee a peace settlement with Israel.

Thanks to Barry Rubin, C. Cantoni, Gaia, Insubria, JD, TB, TV, Vlad Tepes, and all the other tipsters who sent these in.

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

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

[This post is a stub — nothing further here!]

A Sandwich With a Spine

Geert Wilders launched his party’s campaign for the June 9 elections with a speech in Rotterdam last night. Our Flemish correspondent VH has translated an article about the event as well the speech itself, along with some additional relevant material.

First, from De Telegraaf:

Wilders wants to reconquer the Netherlands

“Here in Rotterdam we plant our flag and begin the reconquest of the Netherlands.” Geert Wilders had a clear message on Monday evening in Rotterdam at the start of the his Party for Freedom’s campaign for the parliamentary elections on June 9. He deliberately chose Rotterdam, the city of Pim Fortuyn, “the man who paid with his life for his ideals.”

Wilders again indicated that he wants to govern. “The Netherlands needs a strong PVV that can put affairs in order.” And: “Without the PVV in a new government, the Netherlands will descend further into a morass of politically correct inaction, and the problems will not be solved but only worsen.”

According to Wilders, the CDA [Christian Democrats], PvdA [Labour, Socialists] and VVD [Center-Right Liberals] have made an ever bigger mess of it in recent decades when they governed. The PVV leader warned his supporters that a vote for VVD leader Mark Rutte or CDA leader Jan Peter Balkenende might just as well be a vote for Job Cohen (PvdA) and Alexander Pechtold (D66).

Wilders especially turned against Cohen, leader of the PvdA, whom he blamed for having no spine. The red flag that characterizes the Labour Party has made way for a red carpet being rolled out for Islam and mass immigration, according to the PVV leader. The PVV chooses optimism and hope, he said. “We are hard where needed, and soft where possible.” Opposite Islam the PVV places “our identity” and “opposite Job Cohen more security and less immigration,” he said.

A relaxed Wilders on stage had short conversations with candidates on the list. He sat on a bar stool in front of an audience of about two hundred interested people who later were able to put forward their questions in conversations with the candidates. Afterwards Wilders’ sympathizers queued to have their picture taken with Wilders and to have a short talk.

At the beginning of election night, Fleur Agema, number two on the PVV list, had already explained that the training of candidates started two years ago in little classes on Saturday. Agema and Barry Madlener, who now represents the party in Europe, then pretended to be “Barend en Van Dorp” [former TV news show]. In those knowledge quizzes Wilders played Mulder [Jan Mulder, left wing sidekick to the presenters Barend and Van Dorp]. “It was always a feast,” said Agema, who has the daily political leadership of the PVV fraction, according to Wilders.

Wilders said not a word about the two of the top ten candidates who have now been pulled. The discredited number five on the list, Gidi Markuszower, withdrew Saturday night.[1] The number nine, Mellony van Hemert, had already preceded him in mid-April due to “medical reasons”.

Surrounded by security guards, Wilders entered the hall accompanied by the song “Eye of the Tiger,” from the soundtrack of the movie Rocky III. The loud bang that shot paper streamers into the theatre at the start of the evening, shortly caused a shock in the highly secured building at the south bank of Rotterdam. But Wilders’ wide grin made it clear that with this he contributed to this PVV party.

Below is the speech Geert Wilders gave in Rotterdam, as posted at the PVV website:
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Speech by Geert Wilders — PVV election night, Rotterdam, April 26

Dear friends, with this great list we will engage in the battle. With this list we will carry on a great campaign. To reconquer the Netherlands. With this list we will light a beacon. I hereby declare the election campaign of the Party for Freedom officially opened!

Folks, did you watch “Zembla” [TV program] yesterday?

In that program the state broadcaster compared us to Nazis, Milosevic, and ethnic cleansers. Indeed, where would we be without the state broadcaster? Of us all, for us all. But apart from that: the name of the program nicely indicates where we’ll have to send those leftist activists, after we have taken them off the subsidy-infusion: To Nova Zembla.

They are themselves convinced the earth is warming, so surely they will not oppose it.

Friday we presented our election program. And today our campaign begins. There was only one place we could do that: here in Rotterdam, here in Rotterdam-South [South bank of Rotterdam]. For this is not an ordinary city. This is the city of Coen Moulijn [1970s Feyenoord football celebrity], and Pietje Bell [famous children’s book series]. But more than anything else: this is the city of Pim Fortuyn. The man who paid with his life for his ideals.

This is also the city which is cracking at the seams like no other, as a result of mass immigration and Islamization. Entire neighborhoods are being Islamized. What was once the largest port in the world, is now the capital of Eurabia. A city of minarets and a mega-Mosque. There has never been any doubt about it. Only here in the city of Pim Fortuyn could we begin. And we do that tonight.

Here in Rotterdam we plant our flag and begin the reconquest of the Netherlands. We believe the best days of the Netherlands still lie ahead. That we are heading for a future that is many times more wonderful than what we leave behind us. If we only dare, if we only dare to choose. On June 9, the Netherlands can choose.

We choose for optimism and hope. Our election is the agenda for hope and optimism. The best election program, that may count on support among many Dutch people. We are hard where needed, and soft where possible.

If you say: I agree with that program, then you are not the only one. Maurice de Hond (of Peil.nl) has polled our positions, and it appears that the electorate agrees with us on many points. The aversion towards mass immigration, the repulsion felt towards Islam, and opposition to Europe. The Netherlands is more PVV-minded than the state broadcaster will ever let you know. Scrapping of the JSF [Joint Strike Fighter], ten thousand additional nurses in the health service. The Netherlands wants it. Only in the canal zone and Hilversum are they against it.

We choose for the people who do not get it for nothing in the Netherlands. We choose for Henk and Ingrid. Ordinary Dutch people who work hard and worry about safety in their city, district and street, about mass immigration and Islamization, about the poor care for their parents, about high taxes, the economic crisis, the financing of their children’s study.

And the PVV wants to govern. We want to change the Netherlands. We want to take our responsibility. Without the PVV in a new government, the Netherlands will descend further into a morass of politically correct inaction. Without the PVV the problems of the Netherlands will not be solved, but will only worsen.

And do not forget: the CDA [Christian Democrats], PvdA [Labor, Socialists] and VVD [Liberals] are parties who already did it together before, have governed together in “Purple” [name given for a cabinet with the PvdA (red), VVD (blue), and D66] and in center-right or other cabinets. We have seen them all. We have seen all pass by. They have created an ever bigger mess. That may happen again after June 9. A vote for Mark Rutte [VVD] or Jan Peter Balkenende [CDA] may, just like that, be a vote for Cohen [PvdA] and Alexander Pechtold [D66, Liberal Socialists].

What the Netherlands needs is a strong PVV that can put affairs in order. We are a party that wants to solve the problems, even if it doesn’t suit the political elite, even if the solutions are difficult. On mass immigration and Islam, about health care, on crime and high taxes, about cutting down on left-wing hobbies [such as development aid and global warming, etc.] and tackling the economic crisis. The PVV is desperately needed to make a stronger country of the Netherlands. For a tough but social policy there is no better choice than a vote for our PVV!

The PVV offers the Netherlands hope and optimism. But we know: it is a hope without illusions. Because we see what is going on in our country. More and more citizens wonder whether their future is still in the Netherlands. Tens of thousands of Dutch people leave our cities, tens of thousands of Dutch people leave our country. The question why The Hague [the government] continues with its unwholesome actions that are not supported by our people occurs to ever more Dutch citizens.

Meanwhile among many people the feeling arises that we are in the process of losing the Netherlands. Neighborhood after neighborhood, street after street, school after school. Mass immigration has achieved a sad record, and the coming years will only continue to explode. Crime is rampant, and anyone who watches “Opsporing Verzocht” [the TV program “Crime Watch”] for just two minutes knows that crime is often the result of the policy of “Sinterklaas come, but bring your servant inside”.

To many of the problems that afflict Netherlands the same diagnosis applies: elites have drifted away from reality and on their own started to do things that are no good to the ordinary people. Our elites have embraced the idea of “anything goes”. There is no good or evil, all cultures are equal, be they Islam or Christianity, shaking hands or not, who cares.

Even so, the Left-wing potentate have united with Islam. The Left and the Islam hitch up together. The leftist elite with pleasure closes its eyes to the reality: women’s oppression, hatred against gays, benefit dependency, street terrorism, the hostility towards democracy, etc.

Our pride which the Dutch for decades with conviction have paid for, the welfare state, has deteriorated into a magnet for adventurers. No longer a shield for the weak, but a collection point for loafing immigrants. And who pays that? That is you. Henk and Ingrid are paying for Ali and Fatima.

Are we powerless? Should we patiently watch everything we hold dear being mangled by that nutty elite?

Of course not. The Netherlands must opt for solutions. If we want to, we can do it. Our ancestors saw a sloppy swamp-delta, and said: this will become an oasis. Rotterdam people once saw their city bombed to rubble, and said: together we put our shoulders under it. The Party for Freedom sees a country that is sinking further and further into the swamp and says: punch it up!

Pim Fortuyn already said it: “Because this country is fed up. C’est ça, that is what I stand for.”[2]

The PVV stands par excellence for the people who don’t get something for nothing. The PVV chooses for a caring Netherlands. We will with pleasure open the purse for ten thousand extra nurses, with a higher salary, in the nursing homes for our elderly. We are also opposed to an increase of the private risk in health care. We keep our hands off student grants and the student (public transport) travel pass. We will not touch the unemployment benefit and mortgage tax relief. We do not want a relaxation of the dismissal rights and the age for the state pension should remain at 65.

The PVV chooses an economically prosperous Netherlands. Where citizens and businesses pay taxes as little as possible, so they can spend their own money the way they decide themselves. A Netherlands that is not stationary, but moves, thus more roads and no road pricing. We choose a smaller government, without too much paternalism. For a sparkling democracy, with referendums. No European super-state, but economic cooperation. No network of subsidized left-wing action groups. And above all: for a secure and safe Netherlands where the scum are arrested and deported, and not subsidized and coddled.

Ladies and gentlemen, we are not the only party participating in the elections. The PvdA was thinking: you know what, the mayor of Amsterdam [Job Cohen] becomes our candidate. What he has done for Amsterdam he can do for the Netherlands.

The question is whether that is a pledge or a threat.

We are always finding out more of what Job Cohen has actually done for Amsterdam. Not much for the original residents, those who now live in [the cities of] Almere and Purmerend. But for fortune-seekers he has been on his feet 24 hours a day. Cohen is one hundred percent pro-Islam. He finances a radical mosque. The mayor of the canal zone advocates an Islamic culture in the Netherlands. Learning Dutch is not necessary according to him. Cohen literally says: we must accept Muslims who discriminate against their wives. Even shaking hands with women is not needed according to him.

In the canteen of the Amsterdam police force, you can order something delicious. A sandwich “Cohen”. Which is a sandwich with flabby meat. It is described as: “Delicious, without spine”. By his own chief of police chef, Cohen is called a beach ball, one that blows with all winds.

The PvdA is the party of the double passports. In the old days the PvdA had a red flag. Now it is the club of the red carpet. The red carpet for Islam. Folks, I say: The Netherlands has no need for beach balls, but for leadership.

Dear friends, on June 9th you can place your order in the canteen of our democracy. Then you can decide for yourself if you want a sandwich with or without spine.

Dear friends, put it in your agenda. On June 9 we will have a party. Then we’ll celebrate the mega-gain of the PVV. Until then we will light a beacon in our country with this group of giants [the candidates] and our thousands of volunteers. We’ll begin with that right now. Our volunteers are on the road as of tonight. They will go door to door and distribute hundreds of thousands of pamphlets throughout the Netherlands with our message. Today, here in Rotterdam, the reconquest of the Netherlands begins.

Are we powerless? Of course not.

  • Opposite more of the same, we place decisiveness.
  • Opposite Islam, we place our identity.
  • Opposite the multi-nonsense, patriotism.
  • Opposite the canal zone, Henk and Ingrid.
  • Opposite the destruction of a caring Netherlands, the protection of the citizen.
  • Opposite the pessimism, ten thousand new nurses and ten thousand new police officers.
  • Opposite the cultural relativist malaise, we place Dutch hope and optimism.
  • And opposite Job Cohen, more security and less immigration.

Dear friends, we will go for it! Choose list 5, choose the Party for Freedom!

Thank you!

Notes:

[1]   Gidi Markuszower was attacked by the left-wing press for “illegal possession of weapons” and for having called for a ban on Goldstone report supporters:

GeenStijl:

In 2008 Gidi spent a second at the police station due to a contravention of the Arms Act. Or actually not really. He was just in the possession of a firearms license but did not comply with transport restrictions. After a chat in the police station the case was dismissed by the judiciary. Obviously, because Gidi was at the time was certified security. Nevertheless, reason enough for the Vrij Nederland [left wing opinion magazine] journalist @Neeeltje to twitter: “Breaking: PVV’er arrested for illegal possession of weapons!” That kind of headline scores much better, of course.

De Pers:

Markuszower, number five on the PVV-list for the next elections, is a member of the church council of the Nederlands-Israëlitische Hoofdsynagoge, NIHS [Dutch-Israelite Main Synagogue] in Amsterdam. In late March he submitted a motion calling for a ban (cherem) on anyone who publicly defends the UN report by Richard Goldstone on the Gaza war. The radical appeal is justified, according to Markuszower, because the Goldstone report, in which Israel is accused of war crimes, brings the existence of that country in serious jeopardy.

Still, there was no room left whatsoever for Gidi Markuszower to counter the attacks and explain his positions on the Goldstone report without damaging the PVV. He would also now risk being permanently in the crosshairs of the left-wing demonization machine. Reason enough for Gidi Markuszower to decide to step down: “Today I decided to withdraw my MP candidacy for the Party for Freedom. For the past two weeks I have been allowed to experience what it means to be constantly held under a negative magnifying glass. In such a position I do not feel senang (Indonesian for “comfortable” or “at ease”) and do not wish to continue the next four years like that. I continue to fully endorse the PVV and I am convinced that the party will achieve a resounding election victory on June 9.” [source: GeenStijl]

Dagelijkse Standaard concluded:

[…] Gidi Markuszower is the victim of a leftist witch-hunt. That is the motive for him to withdraw as a candidate or the PVV. Franciso van Jole [extreme left-wing demonizer] was one of those “journalists” who let his hatred of the PVV flow seamlessly into hatred of Markuszower, and did not refrain from linking to his being Jewish. […] The left-wing press has learned little after Pim Fortuyn. Again an atmosphere of fear and intimidation had been created in which politicians who refuse to endorse the leftists’ ideas of salvation are torn down mercilessly. A sad observation.

[2]   See also: Then and Now: Part Three:

[00:29] Because this country is FED UP! … C’est ÇA! That is what I stand for.

A Nation of Snivellers

Ummah Jack


Many thanks to Gaia for pointing out this entry from Norman Tebbit’s blog at The Telegraph. Lord Tebbit talks at length about the absurdities of the three major parties in the run-up to next month’s general election in the UK.

The blog post itself is worth reading, but the comments are what you should go over there for. This comment by James(1) is my favorite:

Got out of London last year, for obvious reasons, and now live somewhere that still resembles England. I feel sorry for those decent real Brits who can’t escape enrichment, especially the elderly, but the rest deserve to become second class citizens in their own country. If I were an immigrant I’d despise them for allowing this to happen to their country.

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People say the BNP hate immigrants. The only people I hate are the snivelling Brits who can’t be a***d to take an interest in the fact their country is dissolving.

Look at all the nutters with their silly liblabcon placards hanging from their properties. They must be retarded, it’s the only explanation. Britain, a nation of retards, who just can’t give their country away fast enough!

How the hell are we descended from the WW1/2 generation!? We are total w@nkers.

How Western Liberals Helped Create Modern Islamism

John O’Neill’s latest essay departs from his usual themes to examine the cultural rot of the West, which is what has paved the way for the Islamic incursion.


How Western Liberals Helped Create Modern Islamism
by John J. O’Neill

I vividly recall, just a few weeks after the 9/11 attacks, seeing a photograph of the Bin Laden family, or some of the younger members of the family, on holiday in Sweden. The year, I believe, was 1971. Osama was there, as were about fifteen of his brothers (and half-brothers) and sisters. All of them were dressed in typical “gear” of the time, bell-bottomed jeans and tight pullovers. Some of the boys had long hair, as did the girls. None of these were veiled, or betrayed in her attire the slightest hint of Islamic influence. They could have been a group of youngsters from any western country.

Many if not all the newspapers published this photograph, and the question they were asking was: What could have turned Osama from the easy-going modern youth of the picture into the sworn and fanatical enemy of everything modern and everything western? In the opinion of the present writer however the newspapers were asking the wrong question. What they should have been pondering was: What could have transformed not an individual, but a large section of a civilization, into the sworn enemy of everything modern and western? For the journey taken by Bin Laden in the years between 1971 and 2001 was taken also by many millions of his co-religionists throughout the Islamic world; and the thirty to forty years that have elapsed since the 1970s have seen one Muslim society after another systematically reject the modern world and turn the clock back to the seventh century. Whilst by the late 60s, women all over the Islamic world had adopted western fashions and lifestyles, the tide was dramatically reversed by the late 70s, when traditional Islam, with its strict dress code and social outlook, again bestirred itself. One would now be hard-pressed to find any Islamic country where the easy-going attitudes of the 1950s and 60s still hold sway.

What then has caused this cultural revolution? A clue, I believe, lies in the fact — almost universally ignored by commentators — that the West has experienced its own cultural revolution in the same period. But the West’s revolution has been of a very different kind. Whilst the Islamic world was regressing deep into the seventh century, the West was plunging headlong into an age of unparalleled license and sexual permissiveness. The fact that these two revolutions happened in parallel with each other is not, I hold, a coincidence: the two are inextricably linked. The revolution is Islam was in very large part a reaction to and against the revolution in the West.

Many commentators are aware of the story of Sayyid Qutb, the Egyptian founder of the Islamic Brotherhood, a radical Islamic extremist who is now widely regarded as the spiritual founder of Al Qaida. Qutb spent much of 1949 in the town of Greeley, Colorado, where he studied educational theory and practice. He wrote about his experiences in his book, The America I Have Seen, almost every page of which gives expression to his abhorrence of American society. Most of all, Qutb was shocked by what he regarded as the open and flaunted sexuality of American women. Their mannerisms, their expressions, their dress, all spoke to him of a deep-seated depravity. But this was 1949, long before the permissive society of the 60s and 70s; long before Oh Calcutta and Woodstock. By modern standards, the America visited by Qutb was extremely conservative. Marriage was the norm. Women stayed at home and raised the children. Illegitimacy was unusual, and sexual promiscuity frowned upon. The cinema and the press were strictly censored. Yet Qutb found it all abhorrent. Even an innocent dance is a church basement was seen by him as an occasion of lewd depravity.

There is no question that Qutb was an extreme conservative — a conservative moreover coming from an unusually backward country, and from a cultural environment more restrictive of women than any in the world. There is no question also that Qutb represented a mode of thinking that could have been found in any century of Islamic history. In the early twentieth century, and before that, Qutb’s views would have been the norm. But it is important to remember that by 1949 Qutb was a voice crying in the wilderness. No one was listening: For while Qutb ranted and raved about western decadence, the whole Arab and Islamic world was moving to embrace the West as never before. From Casablanca to Jakarta, Muslim women began to abandon the veil, and as the 1950s progressed, western dress and social attitudes became more and more the norm. By the mid-60s it was possible to walk through Cairo or Tehran and see a clear majority of women dressed in western fashion. The power of the mosque, it seemed, and of the imam, was fading fast.

But what a difference a decade makes! Or should I say, two or three decades.
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The West as a whole became aware of the new Islamism in 1979 when Ayatollah Khomeini made his historic flight from Paris to Tehran and began the process of turning a modern semi-industrialised society into a backward theocracy. This may have been the point at which the West took notice, but it needs to be stressed that much of the groundwork had been laid in the previous decade. Yet that groundwork was laid as much in the West as in the Muslim world: For it was in the late 60s and early 70s that the societies of Western Europe and North America finally severed the link with their Judeo-Christian past. This was the decade that saw the dawn of the Permissive Society. Within little more than ten years socialist or liberal administrations in almost every western country had legalized abortion, relaxed censorship, provided for easy divorce, and introduced legislation which essentially gave financial encouragement to single parenthood. This rapidly led to the decline of marriage and sky-rocketing rates of illegitimacy. A spin-off of the latter, not felt so much at the time, was social breakdown on an unparalleled scale.

These social and cultural changes were accompanied by the rise, amongst the intelligentsia, of a militantly secular culture, which seemed to lose no opportunity to “debunk” traditional Christianity, whether in the movies, on television or in the newspapers; and which promoted a culture of sneering condescension directed at the beliefs of practising Christians. Literature and art seemed to be overwhelmingly controlled by such persons, who were more than anxious to heap accolades and awards on any production that took a swipe at Christianity. Increasingly, Christians had to endure the most obscene fun being made of their faith in all kinds of arenas. God, the intellectual elite of the West proclaimed, was dead; and the Brave New World they were constructing was right out of Aldous Huxley’s famous dystopia of the same name. Sexual pleasure was the purpose of life, and if you weren’t part of it, you were worse than stupid.

Christians, being followers of a teacher whose primary injunction was forbearance, seemed prepared to take all of this, or to make their protests peaceful and law-abiding. The reaction in the Muslim world was rather different. It would perhaps be superficial to quote the plethora of writings emanating from the Islamic world during the 1970s and 80s (or from the contemporary world for that matter) decrying the decadence and godlessness of the West. The point is, that from the mid-1970s young Muslims began to listen to these voices, whereas previously they did not. And this is the situation that now prevails. The writings of Islamist radicals rage against the “godless” West; and statements of terrorist leaders and individual suicide bombers speak of the holy task they have set themselves in destroying the “enemies of God.” Islamist websites make it perfectly clear that they regard the intellectual leaders of the West, the radical secularists, as engaged in a war against God, and that they believe them therefore to be legitimate targets.

It is important to note here that the Islamist preoccupation with this topic is rarely reported in the popular media, especially the leftist media, which prefers to find what it wants to find in the Islamists’ motivations. We are constantly told, for example, in the pages of the New York Times and the Guardian, that the casus belli is “the War in Iraq”, “the Palestinian problem”, or “western imperialism.” Yet in the years leading up to the September 11 attacks there was no war in Iraq, and the Islamists of Sudan who during the 1980s and 90s slaughtered perhaps two million non-Muslims in the south of the country were not in any way worried by the situation in Palestine. Nor were the Islamists of Algeria particularly concerned with the Palestinian issue when they murdered perhaps quarter of a million of their own people during the 90s. And even after 9/11 the Palestinian problem hardly figured at all in the demands or statements made by Bin Laden and his cohorts. On the contrary, these statements were full of anger at the “atheism” of the “infidels” and the decadence of the West, which they vowed to resist. If western imperialism was the problem, then it was the cultural imperialism of the secular, anti-religious liberal elite. It is true, of course, in more modern times, the Islamists have on occasion used the language of leftist westerners for propaganda purposes — invariably for statements directed at western audiences. They have learned, for example, to use Blair’s intervention in Iraq as an “official” reason for attacks against Britain — no matter that Saddam Hussein, the man overthrown by Bush and Blair, was a great hater of Islam, and the murderer of more Muslims than anyone since Genghis Khan. If the Iraq War can be used to stir up internal conflict among the infidels, so much the better.

Yet can even the most doctrinaire leftist deny that modern Britain, with its spiralling crime, family breakdown, vulgarity and celebrity obsession, and general social disintegration, is an easy place to hate and a difficult one to identify with? And surely only the most wilfully blind would fail to see that the militantly secularist world-view promoted on television and the media is profoundly alienating to anyone from a traditional or religious background.

None of this is an attempt to “explain” radical Islamism as the fault of the West. Still less is it an attempt to in any way justify the beliefs or actions of these people. The Islamists do not occupy any kind of high moral ground and have no answers to the world’s problems. None of them are moral people, least of all in a sexual sense. The Paradise they aspire to, after all, is unmistakably sensual, where they look forward to being pleasured to the end of time with their 72 dark-eyed houris. And the ideology espoused by the Islamists is in no way new. It is not a creation of the West. The Islamists represent a revival of mainstream Islamic thought; a theology which has historically not only justified aggressive war, but regarded it is a moral duty. Yet until the 1960s this way of thinking, and Islam itself, was essentially on the way out. Throughout the Islamic world the West was admired and imitated. Western culture was on the ascendant and western attitudes viewed as morally better than what Islam had created in the past. An age of reason, a veritable Enlightenment, was on the point of being born. Yet the moral nosedive taken by western societies in the late 60s and 70s reversed everything. Hollywood movies, previously standard-bearers of western morality (think of Casablanca, for example), became, almost overnight, obnoxious vehicles of profanity and obscenity. Slowly but surely, as the West began to reject all forms of moral restraint, the mood in the Muslim world (and in other eastern cultures) began to change. The West, hitherto admired, was now regarded with horror. And this is the mood which still prevails. True, neither Buddhists nor Hindus (nor conservative Christians) strap bombs to their bodies and commit mass murder. Their faiths are too strongly pacifist for that. Yet in the Islamic sphere things were different, and once again people began to listen to the Sayyid Qutbs of the world.

I would be remiss if I ended without mentioning one or two of the ramifications of the present situation. Not only have the western liberals revived an ancient fanaticism in the Muslim world, but they have created — in several ways — openings by which this fanaticism has been able to reach the West and flourish here. Apart from the criminally-misguided policy of massive and virtually uncontrolled immigration from the Middle East (multiculturalism is a central plank of leftist/secularist thought), the policy of marginalising Christianity has also created a moral and spiritual vacuum of the most dangerous kind. A newspaper article in a British daily shortly after 9/11, titled “Islam’s Armani Army”, dealt with young middle-class professionals in England who had embraced Islam. The striking thing about these young people was that they all came from committedly secularist backgrounds — some of their parents were left-wing Labour Party members, others were Communists and Socialists of various hues. It was clear that these young people, completely cut off from their own cultural roots, had found in Islam a religious identity they had never previously possessed.

It is no exaggeration to say that the whole leftist response to the Islamist threat is loaded with irony. So, for example, whilst they profess to be the side most anxious to find reasons as to “why they hate us,” they are also the side most resolutely determined to ignore those reasons. There exists an almost surreal refusal on the part of the left to look at the facts or to even listen to a word the Islamists say, preferring instead to put into the minds of the Islamists concerns which are entirely their own. A striking, and obnoxious, example of this was seen in Michael Moore’s reaction to the 9/11 attacks. Why, he asked, had the Islamists attacked the people of New York, who had not even voted for George Bush? The assumption on Moore’s part that the Islamists had picked the “wrong” target was predicated on the notion that they were some kind of socialist movement concerned with the capitalist exploitation of their homelands. Not only did Moore fail to read a single line of what the Islamists have been saying for years, but he, along with the entire left, have failed to understand that they themselves are the primary cause of the Islamists’ hatred and contempt for the West. Thus whilst calling for us to “understand” the Islamists’ motives, they continue to promote ever more extreme secularist policies, such as gay marriage and gay adoption, which only further inflames the Islamists’ rage.

The policies pursued by the left (and I include here zealots like Richard Dawkins of no overtly political affiliation), far from creating a secularist utopia, are in danger of producing a theocracy more fanatical and more obscurantist than anything Europe has ever experienced. The modern left in fact constitutes an enormous fifth column placed right at the heart of the West; a fifth column actively and openly involved in undermining every attempt to defend the freedoms and humanitarian traditions it professes to believe in. There are many historical reasons for this, but that is not the subject of the present paper. What needs to be stressed here is that, should the left have its way, the Islamization of Europe and America is inevitable. Indeed, only two outcomes are possible: Either Europe will rediscover its Christian identity and survive, or the continent will become Muslim. The next decade will be decisive. Already there are signs, admittedly tentative, of a Christian revival.

This will continue, but whether it will be quick enough or strong enough is doubtful. If not, then the Caliphate of Europe beckons.


Holy Warriors: Islam and the Demise of Classical Civilization, is published by Felibri Publications. For information, see the Felibri website.

Belgium Goes Belly Up

Belgium is in the throes of yet another political crisis. The current chaos was brought on by the withdrawal of a Flemish party from the interim coalition government, which effectively caused the government to collapse. The Prime Minister Yves Leterme — who had only been in office five months — then resigned, but King Albert II initially refused to accept his resignation. The king has now surrendered to the inevitable, and Belgium faces the likelihood of elections followed by the all but impossible task of forming a new government.

Vlaams Belang, the Flemish nationalist party, sees in the current crisis an opportunity to prepare for the dissolution of Belgium and the creation of an independent Flanders. A party representative just sent us the following press release:

Vlaams Belang: “Flemish government must prepare the dissolution of Belgium now”

Vlaams Belang introduces a decree to enable Flemish state succession upon the Belgian federation.

The profound political crisis Belgium has run into, clearly proves the Belgian model is a complete failure. In this respect Brussel-Halle-Vilvoorde is just the symptom. The name of the disease is Belgium and the only remedy is Flemish independence. Home and abroad a possible split up of the Belgian federation into a Flemish and a Walloon state is more and more explicitly taken into account. Regardless one advocates such scenario, it’s of the utmost importance that the Flemish Government and its administration prepares itself most thoroughly for whichever scenario to come. When it comes to a dissolution of the Belgian union, the Flemish Parliament and the Flemish Government are the only legitimate democratic representatives of the Flemish people. In order to let a possible transition period pass as efficiently and shortly as possible, the Vlaams Belang feels that the Flemish Government has to take the required measures to anticipate the dissolution of the Belgian union. As a result our party has introduced a bill in which we urge for the Flemish administration to be commissioned to prepare the split of the Belgian federation and to draw up a scenario for that purpose. By means of this bill the Vlaams Belang also wants to urge the Flemish Government to take all necessary initiatives, to make clear Flanders will fulfill its international commitments as the successor state of Belgium and that Flanders will remain a partner in the European and Atlantic cooperation.

– – – – – – – –

The Vlaams Belang wants to avoid at all costs, institutional and/or organizational chaos is caused by the further evaporation and dissolution of the Belgian state. In its role of the good family man, the Flemish Government should anticipate the possible dissolution of the Belgian union. A thorough organization of the transition period and the preparation of Flemish independence on the European and global level are much needed measures to create trust and peace among the people and clarity on the international level. The Flemings are entitled to be certain of the fact that their government and parliament are ready to take over as much federal competences as possible and to play its role as the legitimate representative of the Flemish people.

Filip Dewinter
Chairman of Vlaams Belang in the Flemish Parliament

Gates of Vienna News Feed 4/26/2010

Gates of Vienna News Feed 4/26/2010The Australian government is concerned that some of its tax law may not be sharia-compliant, so it has tasked the Board of Taxation with reviewing existing law to see what needs to be changed. Australia is concerned that it may be missing out on a big chunk of business by failing to consider the sensibilities of Muslim customers.

In other news, the latest evidence indicates that the dangerous ash cloud over Britain caused by the Icelandic volcano never really existed. The predictions about the cloud were based on computer models, which couldn’t be tested because the Met Office plane that would have gathered real data was grounded for repainting. Satellite images now indicate that there was never any significant ash cloud.

Meanwhile, Western defense analysts are concerned about cruise missiles being sold by a Russian company which can be launched from a shipping container. The missiles would be undetectable until they are fired. Iran and Venezuela are reported to be potential customers for the system.

Thanks to Barry Rubin, C. Cantoni, CSP, Fjordman, Gaia, Henrik, heroyalwhyness, Holger Danske, Insubria, JD, Nilk, Steen, TB, Vlad Tepes, Zenster, and all the other tipsters who sent these in.

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

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

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No Poverty, No Justice

This news story from last month concerns a man who lived in a poor region of Wallonia, and was blamed by a judge for being carjacked and having his home repeatedly invaded. His offense? He drove a nice car and lived in an upscale house while having poor people as neighbors.

Many thanks to our Flemish correspondent VH for translating both articles. First, from De Standaard:

“Whoever drives a Jaguar asks to be robbed”

The court ridicules violence in Charleroi

According to a court in the poor city of Charleroi [Wallonia, French part of Belgium] it is unwise to drive in a Jaguar and to live in a nice house. Rich people in an impoverished region of Charleroi must not exhibit their wealth too much. If they do, they should not be surprised when they become victims of crime.

This ruling by a judge in Charleroi (March 23) shocked the French-language commentators. “Justice ridicules violence in Charleroi.” Also the victim responded indignantly: “This verdict is a premium to criminals paid by the court of Charleroi and the Walloon Region.”

The lawyer of the victim will appeal against the ruling. “Should one then drive around Charleroi in a Trabant, walk around in a tracksuit, and live in a dilapidated house, to be safe and to be left alone?” the lawyer, Frédéric Clément de Cléty, foams.

In 1998 the victim, Laurent F., a banker and insurer, bought the rundown mansion of the Delhaize family in Ransart near Charleroi. He fixed the building up with a renovation grant of €6,172.55 from the Walloon Region.

In 2001 Laurent F. became the victim of a carjacking for the first time. The police found back his BMW, but in a home invasion armed men again went on the run with the expensive car.

In 2006, the renovated mansion in Ransart again became the target of a home invasion. “During it my wife and children were threatened with firearms,” recalls Laurent F. The criminals took the pajama-clad man with them in his Jaguar in the middle of the night, and at a business park put him out of the car.

For Laurent F. this was the last straw. He and his family decided to move to the Walloon Brabant region that he considers safer. Because he had not yet lived in the renovated building for ten years, the Walloon Region demanded that he repay €5,555.30 of the renovation grant. F. refused to pay, but the court ruled he was wrong.

In her verdict, Judge Geneviève Denisty states that she “does not want to minimize the psychological effects of a car- and home-jacking”. But it is not about a force majeure, as she determines in a remarkable passage.

“Whereas it might not be wise to attract attention to oneself by driving around in a Jaguar and living in a nice house, thus openly displaying one’s wealth or a certain wealth, in a economically impoverished and disadvantaged region such as Charleroi.”

Besides the repayment of €5,555 and the interest on it, Laurent F. also has to pay judicial costs of €1,071.97 euros. But that does not make him change his mind. A return to his beautiful mansion in Ransart is not in any case an option.

Also from De Standaard:
– – – – – – – –

“A gross insult”

Jean-Jacques Viseur (CDH, Christian Democrat), the mayor of Charleroi, is furious at the judge. An interview.

What do you think of the judge’s ruling?

“I am unbelievably outraged. I’m not supposed to interfere with her verdict. With her statements on Charleroi I do. From a judge would you’d expect that he — in this case it is a she — relies on the rules of law and the facts. Not that she would consider giving misplaced lessons in morality. And not that she would play politics or incorporate her own absurd fantasies as a motivation for a sentence.”

What do you blame her for?

“She acts as if rich people who show their wealth in Charleroi beg to be attacked. With that statement she insults people who live here and in the entire city.

“Just because people live here who have it harder than elsewhere, you cannot just say that it is normal that those people raid wealthy people. She should know this, because she herself is from here.”

Is it true that in Charleroi there are more home invasions and carjackings than elsewhere?

“No, only last week I published the new crime figures. The number of home- and carjackings decreased dramatically. Much more than in other major cities. It is not the most luxurious cars that are carjacked most.

“There are big dealers of BMWs, Audis and Mercedes in this city. They do a wonderful business and they are no more carjacked than any other type of car.”

Are you going to file a complaint against the judge?

“I can’t. A judge may write in a ruling whatever he/she wants. Even though in this case it is purely subjective nonsense founded on nothing. I therefore will write a letter to the Court’s President to complain about what this judge is permitting herself. It is the second time I will have done that.

“Another judge gave someone who was convicted of robbery with violence a community-service sentence as room guard in the court buildings. I think that should not be possible. I myself am quite sure that 99 percent of the magistrates in the city would agree with me.”

Eloquent Fanaticism and Fortunate Usurpation

Our British correspondent JP points out what Edward Gibbon had to say about Islam and its prophet in The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Volume 1 (edited with an introduction by David Womersley, the Penguin Press, Allen Lane, 1994, reprinted 2005), as described on pp. xciii-xciv of the Introduction:

Imposter

Islam spread with a cumulative velocity, slowly at first (‘the first and most arduous conquests of Mahomet were those of his wife, his servant, his pupil, and his friend’), and then with a gathering momentum until the ‘devout fervour of enthusiasm’ had elevated ‘the prophet’ (as Gibbon, influenced by Hume’s characterization of enthusiastic religion, uniformly styled Mahomet) to ‘the regal and sacerdotal office.’ At that point, Islam became a religion of conquest, as the energies natural to ‘the restless enthusiasm, required a safe and external vent.’ The result was a social force of great power, employing by turns force and persuasion, and arousing both fear and enthusiasm in its converts. The paired appeals, and the paired emotions, each acted reciprocally to reinforce the other, ‘till every barrier yielded to their irresistible power.

Gibbon advanced a natural explanation of the success of Islam, and his understanding of how this period of Arabian history could be illuminated by reflection on the meeting of a particular national character and the gifts of an extraordinary (though perfectly human) individual prompted him to distinguish Mahomet’s character from both the fraud attacked by Prideaux and the hero admired by Boulainvilliers. In Gibbon’s more candid view, Mahomet’s character was determined by successive episodes of enthusiasm and imposture. Initially, it was reasonable to suppose that enthusiasm had been dominant:

– – – – – – – –

The energy of a mind incessantly bent on the same object would convert a general obligation into a particular call; the warm suggestions of the understanding or the fancy, would be felt as the inspirations of heaven; the labour of thought would expire in rapture and vision; and the inward sensation, the invisible monitor, would be described with the form and attributes of an angel of God.

But ‘from enthusiasm to imposture, the step is perilous and slippery,’ and Gibbon could find nothing of the original enthusiast in the aged autocrat:

Of his last years, ambition was the ruling passion; and a politician will suspect, that he secretly smiled (the victorious imposter!) at the enthusiasm of his youth and the credulity of his proselytes.

Consequently, Gibbon found nothing prodigious in the establishment and growth of Islam. Mahomet’s ‘success has perhaps too strongly attracted our admiration,’ but that admiration would be moderated by the natural causation discerned by Gibbon’s dispassionate inquiry.

Eloquent fanaticism and fortunate usurpation are commonplaces in the history of the world.

“Dear Idiots”

Farshad Kholghi writes a weekly satirical column for the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, and yesterday he used The Iliad as his point of departure. Many thanks to Signe for the translation:

Ten Commandments from the Royal Garden

Every time I read it, I cannot help but laugh my head off at the world’s lousiest trick, namely the Trojan Horse.

When I first read the book in high school I could not imagine how someone could be so naïve, happy-go-lucky, and idiotic as to accept a “gift” from a mortal enemy without first asking a few critical questions.

But now, after the Copenhagen Municipality has approved the Iranian Mullah regime’s great mosque on Vibevej, it has dawned upon me that such naïve types exist, and that Homer’s adventure repeats itself in reality. The wooden horse has just been replaced by a gigantic building with a dome and four 35-meter minarets.

I enjoyed the book [Farshad is reading The Iliad in a park], and freshly fallen volcanic ash adorned the shrub next to my bench. But suddenly the shrub caught fire.

“Why in the world don’t you answer your mobile?” a voice said.

“Eh? I turned it off?” I said anxiously.

“I couldn’t get in touch with you on Facebook, either. So I had to call you the old fashioned way,” the voice explained.

“Who is it?”

“It is I, God. I have a message to the Islamic world. Write.”

I began to write.

“Dear idiots. You must shave off your ugly beards. You look like the great grandfather of the Neanderthal. […] And to all you women, who think you must cover yourselves with black garbage bags: Stop this nonsense. If I wanted you the cover up, I would have created you as a burka instead.

“I also have another newsflash. It is not just the Western cities that must be ‘multicultural’ and have mosques and prayer rooms. No. Also the Muslim countries and cities must be multicultural. Therefore I order millions of Christian, Jews, Buddhist and Hindus to go to Mecca and other places in Moslem countries to live there and build churches and temples. I hear that you spend billion of dollars on building giant mosques in the West. This is very interesting, considering the poverty of your own populations.

“Here are ten commandments for you — ten ideas on what you ought to spend your oil and drug trafficking money on, instead of building the spy nests that you call great mosques. Use the money on:

– – – – – – – –

  • Building girls’ schools.
  • Building hospitals.
  • Building universities, that can educate open-minded citizens instead of fanatics.
  • Enlightening people that the earth is round, not flat.
  • Providing decent living conditions so nobody has to emigrate in the hope of a better life.
  • Getting rid of corruption.
  • Establishing a social security net for the population.
  • Accepting and taking care of refugees from other Muslim countries, so they don’t have to flee to the “impure” West.
  • Transforming the desert into fruit gardens You can learn a lot from Israel there.
  • Printing a new version of the Koran — without the many horrible, blood-spattering, and violent chapters that call for killing unbelievers, Jews and independent thinkers.

“Amen.”



Hat tip: Henrik Ræder Clausen.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali Talks About South Park, Theo Van Gogh, and Death by Muslim

“There is one religion that is claiming to be above criticism.”

What’s significant about the following interview with Ayaan Hirsi Ali is that it was aired on CNN, presumably in prime time. Anderson Cooper talks about the threats to Matt Stone and Trey Parker, the creators of South Park, and Ms. Hirsi Ali relates it to the larger problem of Islamic violence and intolerance:



Ayaan Hirsi Ali makes an important point here: if enough people caricature and ridicule Mohammed, “there will be too many people to threaten.”

Which reminds me: May 20th is Everybody Draw Mohammed Day. For this stratagem to work, a lot of famous people will have to contribute — cartoons by insignificant people like me won’t do the job.

Gary Trudeau: are you listening?



Hat tip: TV.

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Gates of Vienna News Feed 4/25/2010

Gates of Vienna News Feed 4/25/2010Now that they have promised a bailout, France and Germany are talking tough to Greece, insisting that it must extend its already stringent austerity measures and reform its fiscal system. The German foreign minister has gone so far as to suggest that no German money may be forthcoming if the Greeks fail to toe the line.

In other news, Iran has struck a deal with Robert Mugabe to exploit Zimbabwe’s untapped uranium for its nuclear program. Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia — obviously nervous over the imminence of all those nukes just across the Persian Gulf — has indicated that it will begin its own nuclear program.

Thanks to C. Cantoni, Gaia, ICLA, Insubria, JD, Steen, TV, Zenster, and all the other tipsters who sent these in.

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

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

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A Rosetta Stone for Geert Wilders: Part Fifteen

A Rosetta Stone for Geert WildersTonight’s featured language for Geert Wilders’ speech at the House of Lords is German.

Germany has a large and active Counterjihad, and the German-language sites Politically Incorrect and Europe News are two of the most frequently visited non-MSM news sites in Europe. Translations into German are an important part of our effort, and the German versions of Geert Wilders’ op-eds and speeches are very popular in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland.

We’ve just added an eighteenth language to the table of translations: Japanese. The full list is below, with clickable links to the languages that have been posted previously:

Albanian German Portuguese
Bulgarian † Hebrew Romanian
Danish Hungarian Russian
Dutch Italian Spanish
Finnish Japanese † Swedish †
French Polish Welsh

(* = assigned but not yet received; † = received but not yet posted)

Here’s a quote from Mr. Wilders’ speech on March 5th:

As former Turkish Prime Minister Erbakan said: “The whole of Europe will become Islamic. We will conquer Rome”. End of quote.

Libyan dictator Gaddafi said: “There are tens of millions of Muslims in the European continent today and their number is on the increase. This is the clear indication that the European continent will be converted into Islam. Europe will one day soon be a Muslim continent”. End of quote. Indeed, for once in his life, Gaddafi was telling the truth. Because, remember: mass immigration and demographics is destiny!

The full text in English may be read here.

Many thanks to Liz at Europe News for the German translation:

05.03.2010

Vielen Dank. Es ist schön, wieder nach London zurück zu kehren. Und diesmal ist es großartig, ich werde mehr von dieser wunderschönen Stadt sehen können, als die Gefängniszelle am Flughafen Heathrow.

Heute stehe ich vor Ihnen an dieser außergewöhnlichen Stelle. Dies ist wirklich eine heilige Stätte. Dies ist, wie Malcolm zu sagen pflegt, die Mutter aller Parlamente, ich stehe in tiefer Demut hier und nehme die Gelegenheit wahr zu Ihnen zu sprechen.

Vielen Dank Lord Pearson und Lady Cox für diese Einladung, und dass sie meinen Film Fitna gezeigt haben. Vielen Dank meine Freunde, dass ihr mich eingeladen habt.

Als erstes habe ich großartige Nachrichten zu verkünden. Am letzten Mittwoch wurden in den Niederlanden Gemeinderatswahlen abgehalten. Und zum ersten Mal hat meine Partei, die Partei für die Freiheit an diesen Kommunalwahlen teilgenommen. Wir haben in zwei Städten kandidiert. In Almere, einer der größten holländischen Städte. Und in Den Haag, der drittgrößten Stadt; der Sitz der Regierung, des Parlaments und der Königin. Und wir haben hervorragend abgeschnitten! Auf einen Schlag wurde meine Partei zur größten Partei in Almere und zur zweitgrößten Partei in Den Haag. Großartige Neuigkeiten für die Partei für die Freiheit, und noch sogar noch bessere für die Menschen dieser zwei schönen Städte.

– – – – – – – –

Und ich kann noch mehr gute Nachrichten verkünden. Vor zwei Wochen ist die holländische Regierung zurückgetreten. Im Juni werden wir Parlamentswahlen haben. Und die Zukunft der Partei für die Freiheit sieht großartig aus. Den Meinungsumfragen nach werden wir zur größten Partei der Niederlande werden. Ich möchte bescheiden sein, aber wer weiß, vielleicht werde ich sogar in ein paar Monaten Premierminister sein!

Meine Damen und Herren, nicht weit von hier steht eine Statue des größten Premierministers, den ihr Land jemals hatte. Und ich möchte ihn heute hier zitieren: „ Der Mohammedanismus ist ein militanter und missionierender Glaube. Es existiert keine rückschrittlichere Kraft auf dieser Welt. Er hat sich gerade in Zentralafrika verbreitet, bei jedem Schritt hinterlässt er furchtlose Krieger (…) die Zivilisation des modernen Europa könnte fallen, wie die Zivilisation des vergangenen Rom.” Diese Worte stammen von niemand anderem als Winston Churchill, die er in diesem Buch „The River War” im Jahr 1899 geschrieben hat.

Churchill hatte Recht.

Meine Damen und Herren, ich habe kein Problem, und meine Partei hat keine Probleme mit dem Muslim als solchem. Es gibt viele moderate Muslime. Die Mehrheit der Muslime sind gesetzestreue Bürger und möchten ein friedliches Leben leben so wie Sie und ich. Ich weiß das. Das ist der Grund aus dem ich immer einen klaren Unterschied mache zwischen den Menschen, den Muslimen und der Ideologie, zwischen Islam und Muslimen. Es gibt viele moderate Muslime, aber es gibt keinen moderaten Islam.

Der Islam strebt danach, die Welt zu beherrschen. Der Koran befiehlt den Muslimen den Jihad zu führen. Der Islam befiehlt den Muslimen die Scharia einzuführen. Der Koran befiehlt den Muslimen den Islam der gesamten Welt aufzuzwingen.

Der ehemalige türkische Ministerpräsident Erbakan sagte: “Ganz Europa wird islamisch werden. Wir werden Rom erobern.” Ende des Zitats.

Der libysche Diktator Gaddafi sagte: „Es gibt heute mehrere zehn Millionen Muslime auf dem europäischen Kontinent und ihre Zahl wird ansteigen. Das ist ein klares Zeichen, dass der europäische Kontinent zum Islam konvertieren wird. Europa wird eines näheren Tages ein muslimischer Kontinent sein.” Ende des Zitats. Tatsächlich, einmal in seinem Leben hat Gaddafi die Wahrheit gesagt. Denn, erinnern Sie sich: Massenimmigration und Demographie ist Schicksal!

Der Islam ist nicht nur eine Religion, er ist hauptsächlich eine totalitäre Ideologie. Der Islam möchte alle Aspekte des Lebens kontrollieren, von der Wiege bis zur Bahre. Die Scharia ist ein Gesetz, das jedes Detail des Lebens in einer islamischen Gesellschaft regelt. Vom Zivil- und Familienrecht, bis hin zum Strafrecht. Sie legt fest, wie jemand essen soll, sich anziehen und sogar wie man die Toilette benutzen soll. Die Unterdrückung der Frau ist gut, Alkohol trinken ist schlecht.

Ich glaube, dass der Islam nicht mit unserem westlichen Lebensstil vereinbar ist. Der Islam ist eine Bedrohung der westlichen Werte. Die Gleichberechtigung zwischen Mann und Frau, die Gleichberechtigung der Homosexuellen und Heterosexuellen, die Trennung von Kirche und Staat, die Redefreiheit, das alles steht auf dem Spiel wegen durch die Islamisierung. Meine Damen und Herren: Islam und Freiheit, Islam und Demokratie sind nicht miteinander vereinbar. Es sind entgegen gesetzte Werte.

Kein Wunder, dass Winston Churchill Adolf Hitlers ‚Mein Kampf’ den „neuen Koran des Glaubens und Krieges, schwülstig, langatmig, konturlos, aber bedeutungsvoll in seiner Aussage”, genannt hat. Wie Sie wissen, zog Churchill diesen Vergleich zwischen dem Koran und ‚Mein Kampf’ in seinem Buch „Der zweite Weltkrieg”, einem Meisterwerk, für den er den Literaturnobelpreis erhalten hat. Churchills Vergleich zwischen dem Koran und ‚Mein Kampf’ ist absolut treffend. Der Kern des Korans ist der Aufruf zum Jihad. Jihad hat viele Bedeutungen und ist die arabische Bezeichnung für einen Kampf. Kampf ist das deutsche Wort für das Englische ‚battle’. Jihad und Kampf bedeuten exakt dasselbe.

Islam bedeutet Unterwerfung, es kann keinen Zweifel über dieses Ziel geben. Es ist gleichsam vorgegeben. Die Frage ist nur, ob wir in Europa und Sie in Großbritannien, mit Ihrer ruhmreichen Vergangenheit, uns unterwerfen oder für unser Erbe kämpfen.

Wir sehen, dass sich der Islam im Westen mit unglaublicher Geschwindigkeit verbreitet. Europa wird schnell islamisiert. Eine große Menge europäischer Städte haben enorm hohe islamische Einwohnerzahlen. Paris, Amsterdam, Brüssel und Berlin sind nur ein paar Beispiele dafür. In einigen Stadtteilen sind schon jetzt islamische Regeln in Kraft getreten. Die Rechte der Frauen werden zerstört. Burkas, Kopftücher, Polygamie, weibliche Genitalbeschneidung, Ehrenmorde. Frauen müssen separaten Schwimmunterricht besuchen, dürfen nicht mit Handschlag begrüßt werden. In vielen europäischen Städten gibt es schon Apartheid. Juden verlassen Europa in steigender Anzahl.

Wie Sie unzweifelhaft wissen, besser noch als ich, ist auch in Ihrem Land die Massenimmigration und Islamisierung sprunghaft angestiegen. Das hat einen enormen Druck auf ihre britische Gesellschaft ausgeübt. Schauen Sie sich an, was zum Beispiel in Birmingham passiert, in Leeds, Bradford und hier in London. Die britischen Politiker, die Winston Ch ruchill vergessen haben, haben jetzt den Weg des geringsten Widerstandes eingeschlagen. Sie haben aufgegeben. Sie haben nachgegeben.

Im letzten Jahr hat meine Partei bei der holländischen Regierung nachgefragt, eine Kosten-Nutzen Analyse zur erstellen über die Massenimmigration. Aber die Regierung hat sich geweigert uns zu antworten. Warum? Weil sie Angst vor der Wahrheit haben. Elsevier, eine holländische Wochenzeitung hat die Kosten auf mehr als 200 Milliarden Euro berechnet. Alleine im letzten Jahr, ergab sich ein Betrag von 13 Milliarden Euro. In Europa wurden noch mehr Berechnungen angestellt: Nach der dänischen Nationalbank kostet jeder dänische Immigrant aus einem muslimischen Staat den dänischen Staat mehr als 300.000 Euro. Dasselbe kann man in Norwegen und Frankreich sehen. Das Ergebnis, das man daraus ziehen kann ist: Europa verarmt von Tag zu Tag. Verarmt immer mehr dank der Massenimmigration. Verarmt immer mehr dank der Demographie. Und die Linken sind hocherfreut.

Ich weiß nicht ob es wahr ist, aber in einigen britischen Zeitungen habe ich gelesen, dass Labour die Tür zur Massenimmigration weit geöffnet hat, um durch diese bewusste Politik die sozialen Strukturen in Großbritannien zu verändern. Andrew Neather, ein ehemaliger Berater der Regierung und Redenschreiber von Tony Blair und Jack Straw sagte, dass das Ziel der Immigrationsstrategie von Labour war, und ich zitiere, „ den Rechten die Vielfältigkeit unter die Nase zu reiben so dass sich ihre Argumente als altmodisch erweisen sollten.” Wenn das wahr ist, dann ist dies symptomatisch für die Linken.

Meine Damen und Herren, begehen Sie keinen Fehler: Die Linke fördert die Islamisierung. Linke, Liberale, sind begeistert über jede neue Schariabank die erschaffen wird, über jede neue Schariaanleihe, über jede islamische Schule, über jedes Schariagericht. Die Linken sehen den Islam als gleichwertig zu unserer eigenen Kultur an. Scharia oder Demokratie? Islam oder Freiheit? Es ist ihnen egal. Universitäten, Kirchen, Gewerkschaften, die Medien, Politiker. Sie alle verraten unsere hart erarbeiteten Freiheiten.

Warum, frage ich mich immer wieder, warum haben die Linken und Liberalen aufgehört dafür zu kämpfen? Es gab einmal eine Zeit, da standen die Linken auf den Barrikaden für die Rechte der Frau. Aber wo sind sie heute? Wo sind sie im Jahr 2010? Sie schauen in die andere Richtung. Weil sie sich dem kulturellen Relativismus verschrieben haben und weil sie von muslimischen Wählerstimmen abhängig sind. Sie sind von der Massenimmigration abhängig.

Dem Himmel sei Dank, dass Jacqui Smith nicht mehr im Amt ist. Es war ein Sieg der Redfreiheit, dass ein Richter des Vereinigten Königreichs ihre Entscheidung vom Tisch fegte, die mir die Einreise in Ihr Land im letzten Jahr verbot. Ich hoffe, dass die Richter in meinem Heimatland zumindest so weise sind und mich von allen Anklagepunkten freisprechen, später in diesem Jahr in den Niederlanden.

Unglücklicherweise haben sie bis jetzt noch nichts Gutes getan. Weil sie die Wahrheit über den Islam nicht hören wollen, und weil sie auch nicht daran interessiert sind die Meinungen der hochklassigen Sachverständigen auf dem Gebiet der freien Meinungsäußerung zu hören. Letzten Monat verweigerte das Gericht bei einer vorausgehenden Anhörung fünfzehn der achtzehn Sachverständigen, die ich benannt hatte.

Nur drei der sachverständigen Zeugen dürfen gehört werden. Glücklicherweise ist Wafa Sultan, meine liebe Freundin und heroische amerikanische Psychiaterin eine davon. Aber ihre Aussage wird hinter verschlossenen Türen gehört werden. Offensichtlich darf die Wahrheit über den Islam nicht in der Öffentlichkeit erzählt werden, die Wahrheit über den Islam muss ein Geheimnis bleiben.

Meine Damen und Herren, ich werde angeklagt wegen meiner politischen Ansichten. Wir wissen, dass es politische Verurteilungen in Ländern des Mittleren Ostens gibt, wie Iran und Saudi Arabien, aber niemals in Europa, niemals in den Niederlanden.

Ich bin angeklagt worden, weil ich den Koran mit ‚Mein Kampf’ verglichen habe. Lächerlich. Ich frage mich, ob Großbritannien jemals die Ansichten von Winston Churchill verurteilen würde…. Meine Damen und Herren, dieser politische Prozess der gegen mich im Gange ist, muss aufhören.

Aber es geht nicht nur um mich, um Geert Wilders. Die Redefreiheit ist in Gefahr. Lassen Sie mich ein paar Beispiele geben. Wie Sie vielleicht wissen, ist eine meiner Heldinnen die italienische Buchautorin Oriana Fallaci, die mit der Angst leben musste, in die Schweiz ausgeliefert zu werden, wegen ihres Anti-Islam Buchs ‚Die Wut und der Stolz’. Der holländische Karikaturist Nekschot wurde in seinem Haus in Amsterdam von 10 Polizisten inhaftiert, wegen seiner Anti-Islam Zeichnungen. Hier in Großbritannien wurde die amerikanische Autorin Rachel Ehrenfeld von einem saudischen Geschäftsmann wegen Beleidigung angeklagt. In den Niederlanden wurden Ayaan Hirsi Ali und in Australien zwei christliche Pastöre vor Gericht gebracht. Ich könnte immer weiter machen. Meine Damen und Herren, überall im Westen sehen sich Menschen, die die Freiheit lieben, diesem legalen Dschihad gegenüber. Das ist islamische ‚Rechtskriegsführung’. Und, meine Damen und Herren, vor nicht allzu langer Zeit wurde der dänische Kariakturist Westergaard beinahe wegen seiner Karikaturen ermordet.

Meine Damen und Herren, wir sollten das Recht der freien Meinungsäußerung verteidigen. Mit unsere ganzen Kraft. Mit aller Macht. Die Redefreiheit ist das wichtigste Gut unserer vielen Freiheiten. Die Redefreiheit ist der Eckpfeiler unserer modernen Gesellschaften. Das Recht der freien Meinungsäußerung ist der Atem unserer Demokratie, ohne die Redefreiheit gäbe es unsere Art zu leben, unsere Freiheit nicht mehr.

Ich glaube, es ist unsere Pflicht das Erbe der jungen Soldaten, die die Strände der Normandie einst stürmten, zu bewahren. Sie befreiten Europa von der Tyrannei. Diese Helden dürfen nicht für Nichts gestorben sein. Es ist unsere Pflicht die Redefreiheit zu verteidigen. Schon George Orwell sagte: „ Wenn Freiheit überhaupt etwas bedeutet, dann bedeutet es doch das, den Menschen zu sagen, was sie nicht hören wollen.”

Meine Damen und Herren, ich glaube an eine andere Politik, es ist Zeit für einen Wandel. Wir müssen uns beeilen. Wir können nicht länger warten. Die Zeit läuft uns davon. Wenn ich einen meiner liebsten amerikanischen Präsidenten hier zitieren darf. Ronald Reagan sagte einst: “Wir müssen heute handeln um das Morgen zu erhalten.” Das ist der Grund, warum ich die folgenden Maßnahmen vorschlage, ich erwähne jetzt nur einige, um die Freiheit zu erhalten:

Erstens: wir müssen die Redefreieheit verteidigen. Sie ist die wichtigste unserer Freiheiten. In Europa und sicherlich auch in den Niederlanden, wir brauchen so etwas wie den ersten amerikanischen Verfassungsszusatz.

Zweitens: wir müssen den kulturellen Relativismus beenden und loswerden. Den kulturellen Relativisten, den Scharia Sozialisten sagen ich folgendes mit Stolz: Unser Westen ist der islamischen Kultur weit überlegen. Haben Sie keine Angst dies zu sagen. Sie sind kein Rassist, wenn Sie sagen, dass unsere Kultur besser ist.

Drittens: wir müssen die Massenimmigration aus islamischen Ländern aufhalten. Denn mehr Islam bedeutet weniger Freiheit.

Viertens: wir müssen die kriminellen Immigranten hinauswerfen, es muss eine Ausbürgerung erfolgen, wir müssen die Kriminellen mit doppelter Staatsbürgerschaft hinauswerfen. Und davon gibt es viele in meinem Heimatland.

Fünftens: wir müssen den Bau neuer Moscheen verbieten. Es gibt genug Islam in Europa. Insbesondere, weil Christen in der Türkei, Ägypten, im Irak, Iran, Pakistan und Indonesien misshandelt werden, es sollte einen Moscheebaustopp im Westen geben.

Und als letztes noch: wir müssen unsere so genannten Führer loswerden. Wie ich zuvor schon sagte: Weniger Chamberlains, mehr Churchills. Lasst uns richtige Führer wählen.

Meine Damen und Herren. An die vorhergehende Generation gerichtet, die Generation meiner Eltern, das Wort ‚London’ ist ein Synonym für Hoffnung und Freiheit. Als mein Land von den Nationalsozialisten besetzt worden war, bot die BBC meinem Land einen täglichen Hoffnungsschimmer in der Dunkelheit der Nazityrannei. Millionen meiner Landsmänner hörten BBC, im Untergrund. Die Worte „This is London” wurden zu einem Symbol für eine bessere Welt, die bald kommen würde.

Was würde in vierzig Jahren gesendet werden? Wird es immer noch „This is London” sein? Oder wird es heißen „This is Londonistan”? Oder wird es die Werte von Mekka und Medina verbreiten? Wird Großbritannien Unterwerfung anbieten oder Beharrlichkeit? Freiheit oder Sklaverei? Sie haben die Wahl. Und in den Niederlanden haben wir die Wahl.

Meine Damen und Herren, wir werden uns niemals dafür entschuldigen frei zu sein. Wir werden und sollten niemals nachgeben. Und, natürlich, wie einer Ihrer ehemaligen Führer sagte: Wir werden niemals aufgeben.

Die Freiheit muss erhalten bleiben, und die Freiheit wird erhalten bleiben.

Vielen Dank.

The Price is Right

“It is a scandal that the bartering of a girl can go unnoticed in the middle of Germany.”

Here’s the latest news from modern multicultural Germany. The article below is from Friday’s Der Spiegel, and was kindly translated for Gates of Vienna by JLH:

Bride-Price in Berlin

April 23, 2010

Interview by Anna Reiman

Without a Doubt, This Is Trade In Human Beings

Parents of Kurdish origin are said to have sold their 15-year-old daughter to the family of her future husband for €15,500. An active practice right in the middle of Germany, explains women’s rights expert Myria Böhmeke in a Spiegel-Online interview.

Spiegel:   Mrs. Böhmeke, it is said that in Berlin, after the conclusion of the marriage contract, Kurdish parents sold their daughter, Jasmin, to the husband’s family for €15,500. Since then, the 15-year-old, who is pregnant, has separated from her husband. He is said to have beaten her. Is it an exception for Muslim families in Germany to pay a bride price?
Böhmeke:   No, in my experience it is not unusual. Exact figures are difficult to develop, because the girls who are forced into marriage and register with “terre des femmes” often do not know whether money was paid or not. The groom’s family pays the money for, among other things, the loss of a worker in the family.
Spiegel:   Can the bride price be of any use to the woman, if, for instance, she leaves her husband?
Böhmeke:   Originally, the bride price was thought of as a security for the woman, in case of a separation. The women often bought jewelry with it. Since then, it has frequently benefited the family.
Spiegel:   Berlin SPD politician, Bilkay Öney, claims to be shocked by Jasmin’s case. She says: “Buying a bride is taboo in Europe. I don’t care to think about anything like that. That doesn’t even exist in Turkey.” Is this a realistic judgment?
Böhmeke:   Completely false. Forced marriages are still widespread in Turkey. And frequently money changes hands. Underage girls are often married, even though it is forbidden in Turkey as in Germany. In such cases, the marriage contract is executed in a religious framework. As soon as the girl is of age, the “official” marriage takes place. And payment does not just take place in the Islamic societies. There is also often a substantial money payment in India.
Spiegel:   Jasmin’s family seems to be well integrated. Her father is with the fire department and her brother is a policeman. That seems to make the case so much more incomprehensible.
Böhmeke:   No. There is not necessarily a connection between current indicators of integration and consciousness of women’s rights. It often happens that girls who call “terre des femmes” for help appear to be models of integration, speak perfect German, and go to school.

– – – – – – – –

Spiegel:   Can anything legal be done against bride-price? The families could claim that the poorer family was being supported so that the marriage could take place.
Böhmeke:   The case of the 15-year-old in Berlin is against the law, because it has to do with an underage girl. On top of that, according to reports from Bild and BZ, the man’s family publicly declared that they had bought the girl. This is a clear case of trading in human beings.
Spiegel:   It is said that a notary certified that sole custody goes to the husband’s family. Does that have standing before the court?
Böhmeke:   No. When custody is changed, the Child Protective Services and Family Court must be involved. That would be a completely different situation.
Spiegel:   Jasmin says she married voluntarily because she was in love. Does that alter things in your view?
Böhmeke:   Not really. It is forbidden for underage girls to marry in Germany for very sensible reasons: precisely because they cannot judge the consequences of the decision. Jasmin’s case shows that clearly. Her husband allegedly beat her. After a short time, she left him.
Spiegel:   What kind of results are you looking for?
Böhmeke:   More information in the schools. Instruction for teachers and for staff of Child Protective Services. Many things went wrong in Jasmin’s case. According to reports, the girls was no longer going to school regularly. Such things cannot be allowed to happen. Reviews must take place. It is a scandal that the bartering of a girl can go unnoticed in the middle of Germany.
Spiegel:   How many cases of forced marriage have you recorded in the past year?
Böhmeke:   Over 500 women who were threatened with forced marriage or violence as a matter of “honor” have registered with “terre des femmes” in the past year. A third of them were threatened with death.
Spiegel:   What happens to women who are smuggled to other countries like Turkey to conclude the marriage contract?
Böhmeke:   In most cases, they are lost to us, at least if they are not German citizens. Cell phone and passport are usually taken from them. The Turkish authorities have little interest in interfering in forced marriages, least of all in rural areas.