For the first time ever, Geert Wilders' PVV polled as the largest political party in the Netherlands. In the most recent poll by Peil.nl (NL), the PVV polled at 27 seats (out of a 150), one seat more then the the Christian Democrat CDA, the traditional centre of gravity in Dutch politics. It seems the natives are getting agitated...
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Labels:
counterjihad,
geert wilders,
netherlands
In this week where so much big news was reported in the Netherlands, two items almost slipped through the gaps.
First, there was the news that Utrecht city has opened not one, but two office windows in a local mosque. One for men and one for women.
The two separate counters in the Omar al Farouk mosque have been unofficially in business since the end of January. and successfully. Joemman says that on average five women a day come to the women's counter.Second, a muslim stand-up comedian will premier is solo-show before a segregated audience (NL).
It will be a very special premier for Salaheddine. Not only does the Moroccan born writer and tv-maker début tonight as stand-up comedian in Rotterdam, at his request the Theater Zuidplein will offer the female part of the audience the possibility to sit separated from the men.It wasn't that many years ago that the Dutch elite went after the orthodox Dutch-reformed political party SGP for not allowing women to become a member, cutting subsidies based on it's flagrant disregard for Article 1 of the Dutch constitution.
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Labels:
islam,
netherlands,
Western Civ
The news in the Netherlands these days is dominated by the crash of the Turkish Airlines Boeing 737 yesterday. Although any loss of life is deeply tragic, one is relieved that 'only' nine people perished in the accident, with the majority of passengers escaping the accident relatively unharmed.
That doesn't prevent the Dutch media referring to the accident as an 'air disaster' and milking it for what its worth. Every broadcaster has tracked down its own set of citizens who rushed in after the crash to help the wounded. One 'news' program even breathlessly announced a 'reconstruction' of the accident with the help of taped conversations between the Turkish airliner and the tower, evidently from a spotters radio scanner, but with the relevant portion missing. To add a note of serious investigation to it, they even had set up an interview with an 'experienced pilot' in front of a 'simulation' of the event that was clearly constructed in MS Flight Simulator (tm). Without access to the black flight data box, one wonders what that simulation was based on.
All in all the coverage is as light on information as it is big on hyped up drama, breathlessly announced by journalists who want to see themselves taken seriously. It is like watching the freshly landed fish flopping about in the boat. Furious action with very little result.
The other big news is not Geert Wilders tour through the United States, which carries all the signs of being somewhat of a victory tour. Atlas Shrugs does sterling work covering the tour, as do the Baron and Dympna of Gates of Vienna.
No, the other big news in the Netherlands today is the death of Robert Jasper Grootveld. 'Who?', you may well ask. And that was my first reaction to the news as well.
Mr. Grootveld is also known as the 'anti-smoke magician'. He gained some measure of fame (or notoriety, depending on who you ask) for organizing 'happenings' in Amsterdam during the late sixties. According to the news he 'finally found his feet as an artist in the creative atmosphere of the 1960s'.
As an artist his greatest contribution to the culture of the Netherlands and the world however, seem to be him writing the word 'cancer' on billboards advertising brands of cigarettes. The mark of a truely great artist, you will all agree. Sadly, the likes of mr Grootveld would not have the decency, nor the intelligence, to hang his head in shame if he finds himself in the company of Rembrandt and Vermeer.
My sympathies go out to the loved ones of mr. Grootveld. Yet I don't see why his passing should have made the evening news. An obscure man, with little to show for, except the brief moment of glory during the end years of the 60's. He was an old, worn out hippie. His contributions may wel have had merit to the few who knew him. But they don't merit a second of evening news coverage.
Except of course, if you are a fellow old, wornout hippie. And there's the crux. All those vibrant and nubile youth that slept on the Dam in Amsterdam during those happy and heady day have worked their way through the institutions and find themselves now aged and tired, forced, but unwilling, to hand over the reigns of power. In the time between sleeping on the Dam and now, they have seen their ideals not so much crushed as slowly and steadily being invalidated as the naive and vacuous wishful thinking that they are.
Yet they still cling on to the idea that theirs was the greatest generation that ever lived. That they saw things clearer then their parents and that they see things clearer then their children and grandchildren.
The passing away of mr. Grootveld (may he rest in peace) is of no interest whatsoever. He was an old, worn out hippie who's contributions to Dutch society were so lasting that nobody knew of them. Except the fellow old, worn out hippies that manage the media, of course. They remember it, and therefor it must be important. Because everything an old, worn out hippie does is important. To an old, worn out hippie.
Just so you know: the rest of us just don't give a toss. Please, go into retirement already and let us get started on rebuilding the furniture, replacing the carpets and cleaning up the cigaret butts and the wine stains you've left your children and grandchildren on this, the day after the night before.
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Labels:
netherlands
I thought I'd pass this along. No additionally commentary necessary, methinks. The article speaks for itself.
There are certainly many talented and fundamentally honest people working within the EU’s halls of power. Unfortunately for us, the EU has also become an irresistible magnet for the more-than-ambitious, the dogmatic, the self-righteous, the rapacious, the lazy, the profligate, the self-serving, the incompetent and the morally corrupt.Can we leave yet?
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Labels:
EU
[16 - 2] The final installment of the History of optics is up over at Atlas Shrugs: The History of Optics, part 6.
[16 - 2] On Gates of Vienna: The History of Optics, part 5
[10 - 2] On Brussels Journal: The Decline of the English-Speaking World.
[T]he English-speaking world, and the United States in particular, is responsible for championing one of the most dangerous ideas of our time: the proposition nation. Everybody from Saudi Arabia to Somalia can supposedly be imported to the USA and the American political system should be exported to other cultures, by force if necessary. The USA is supposed to be a "universal nation," but there is no such thing. Under Obama, I fear that the USA will no longer be the land of the free, home of the brave, but rather a global enforcer of non-discrimination and Diversity, the Multicultural Empire. Some would argue that this was the case already under Clinton and Bush, but it certainly will be the case now.
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Labels:
Fjordman
The International Free Press Society has the speech Wilders had planned for the Lords.
Britain seems to have become a country ruled by fear. A country where civil servants cancel Christmas celebrations to please Muslims. A country where Sharia Courts are part of the legal system. A country where Islamic organizations asked to stop the commemoration of the Holocaust. A country where a primary school cancels a Christmas nativity play because it interfered with an Islamic festival. A country where a school removes the words Christmas and Easter from their calendar so as not to offend Muslims. A country where a teacher punishes two students for refusing to pray to Allah as part of their religious education class. A country where elected members of a town council are told not to eat during daylight hours in town hall meetings during the Ramadan. A country that excels in its hatred of Israel, still the only democracy in the Middle-East. A country whose capitol is becoming ‘Londonistan.’Seems to me he proved his case, even without making his speech.
The Dutch Parliament must be able to stop Brussels decisions with a veto. The EU should occupy itself with its original task: economic cooperation.And the PVV has started an international site. From a PVV email:
Freedom Party today announces the launch of www.geertwilders.nl, a news site in English, dedicated to keeping an international audience up-to-date on the struggle for our many liberties.And that, Ladies and Gentleman, about wraps this episode up.
[Wilders'] crime is maintaining that Europe’s civilization is rooted in the values of Jerusalem, Athens, Rome, and the Enlightenment — and not in Mecca, Baghdad, Andalusia, and al-Kods. He fights for Europe’s independence from the Caliphate and for its endangered freedoms. He had received serious death threats even before Fitna was released.
Many Muslims in the West support him, but Geert Wilders’s principal weapons are his courage and his willingness to resist even his own government, which is slowly submitting to the OIC’s pressures. Wilders’s enemies pretend that he is an insignificant personality who makes “provocative” statements only in search of fame. In fact, if his motivation were self-interest, he could do far better by courting the OIC’s favors — as so many Europeans are doing, consciously or unconsciously — rather than risking his freedom and indeed his life.
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Labels:
dutch politics,
geert wilders,
netherlands,
UK
Elsevier reports (NL) that Wilders boarded a British Midlands aeroplane that took off around 1350 hours.
This morning there was some confusion, with Geenstijl (NL) reporting that British Midlands had cancelled Wilders' ticket. But around noon it emerged the ticket was still valid.
In a press conference prior to boarding, Wilders expressed the hope that after the last days commotion, British authorities will have come to their senses and let him in. Which is indeed what the Times is asking in an otherwise ill-considered op-ed: Let Him In.
Spitsnieuws has a couple of twitters on board the plane, who's reporting (such as it is) can be followed here. In Dutch though.
Via Gateway: The Sun reported that Geert Wilders 'boarded the plane despite Dutch authorities earlier saying he may not be allowed to leave Holland.' That is getting it so ass-backwards (by implication), that one wonders whether even basic journalism skills still exist nowadays.
[UPDATE001 15:11] Landed at Heathrow.
It is possible the MP could be sent straight back to the Netherlands.[UPDATE002 15:30] Spitsnieuws: Wilders ushered away through a side door. Expected to be put on the 1600 flight back to the lowlands.
The Dutch Ambassador is also at Heathrow to make clear Dutch government's opposition to the ban on Mr Wilders entering the UK.
Wilders calls Gordon Brown the number one coward in EuropeSlide shows of today's events here and NL reporting here.
Geert Wilders to be sent back to Holland after a 47 second interview with British immigration officials….
“This is not an attack on me, but on freedom of speech.”
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Labels:
dhimmitude,
geert wilders,
islam,
netherlands,
UK
The Netherlands has an Authority Financial Markets (AFM). It's principle job is to regulate and oversee Dutch financial markets. And a sterling job they did, what with the way they saw the credit crunch coming... (yes: sarcasm). And now they have discovered the Dutch consumer.
'Borrowing money costs money'.I kid you not. A more perfect example of how high the Dutch citizen is rated by the ruling classes would be very hard to come by, I should think. And of course, a PR company was hired to come up with this flashy warning and equally flashy logo. Undoubtedly for another 6 or 7 figure invoice to the Dutch taxpayer. Money well spent.
But all is not gloom and doom. The AFM on its website presents a number logos to be used in conjunction with the warning. The recurring element in all these is pictured right.
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Labels:
dutch,
EU,
financial crisis,
netherlands
This is madness! Complete and utter insanity. According to Elsevier and Geenstijl (both NL) Geert Wilders has been denied access to the United Kingdom, for fear that his presence may threaten civil order and 'community harmony'. Wilders was scheduled to attend the screening of Fitna in the House of Lords on Thursday. This was after a first attempted, which was thwarted by 'lord' Ahmed threatening with a 10,000 strong crowd of islamites in the streets.
The Dutch government does what it does best: nothing. According to Elsevier:
Foreign Minister Maxime Verhagen (CDA) 'regrets' [the denial of access] and has contacted his British colleague David Miliband. Verhagen called Miliband to express his dissatisfaction with the fact that a Dutch MP is not allowed to travel to another country of the EU.No reaction yet from the PVV or Wilders himself.
'Great Britain is sacrificing freedom of speech,' said Wilders. 'You would expect something like this to happen in countries like Saudi Arabia but not in Great Britain. This cowardly act by the British government is a disgrace.'In an interview with Radio 1, Wilders stated he is reviewing his options, but is seriously considering traveling to the UK on Thursday, despite the ban (h/t Snouck).
A Home Office spokesman told The Daily Telegraph: "The Government opposes extremism in all its forms.It will stop 'extremism, hatred and violent messages'? Yes, we remember well the British authorities standing up to that in recent history.
"It will stop those who want to spread extremism, hatred and violent messages in our communities from coming to our country.
"That was the driving force behind tighter rules on exclusions for unacceptable behaviour that the Home Secretary announced on in October last year."
What also amuses and infuriates me is the government generally pleads impotence on all EU related matters; suddenly they have the confidence to talk of barring or arresting an elected MP from another EU nation, despite the protests of that nation's government. If I was a cynic, I'd find that a little suspicious.He also has some addresses to send complaints to. And GoV has a facsimile of the Home Office letter to Wilders.
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Labels:
dhimmitude,
geert wilders,
islam,
netherlands,
UK
From Fabius Maximus, emphasis is mine:
IMF Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn’s spoke to reporters after a speech on February 7 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. He said something ominous, esp coming from a senior IMF official. File it under “slow but eventual recognition of the obvious.” (...)I guess our 'betters' just completely forgot to tell us... NL reporting here. This is by the way the only Dutch language source that carries the quote. The other source reporting on the press conference in Kuala Lumpur, Het Brabants Dagblad, omits the reference to a depression altogether.
Dow Jones News says (dateline Kuala Lumpur):“We are already in depression … at least for advanced economies,” he told reporters at a briefing. … Strauss-Kahn said there is still downside risk to global economic growth forecasts and the “worst cannot be ruled out.”
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Labels:
economy,
financial crisis
On Gates of Vienna a correspondent using the moniker 'las' penned a piece giving some background on the Netherlands, which 'needs to be understood by [non-Dutch] in order that [they] might have an accurate picture of the political culture in the Netherlands' (I am quoting the Baron here): Holland's Muddy Waters.
The thing is: It is a bit of an eye-opener even for the genuine Dutch as well. The writer, who evidently knows the Netherlands quite well, but isn't a native, puts the finger on an aspect of the whole freedom discussion in the Netherlands, which I for one, hadn't given much thought. But reading the post, I realized it is an aspect that has been an annoyingly irritating sore spot in the back of my thinking all this time:
That problem is: Alles Kan, Alles Mag.The writer goes on and decries Gregorius Nekschot for using the Enlightenment, which gave him his freedom, to bash Christianity as a whole:
Translated as “Everything is Possible, Everything is Allowed”, this is the leftist-liberal ethic that has been a sore spot, particularly amongst elderly Dutch. They will lament, for example, the possibility of exiting an antique store, housed in a beautiful seventeenth century canal house in the Red Light District, only to step into the street and have their eyes accosted with dildos displayed in the window of the next door sex shop. (...)
Theo Van Gogh exemplified this ethic. Even those considered left of centre felt he was over the top. The “Alles Kan, Alles Mag” advocates, having gained such traction within Dutch society are what, in an earlier time, would simply have been termed licentious [in Dutch: liederlijk or losbandig - KV]. But of course “licentiousness” carries baggage, religious baggage, and there is no question that Christianity is “on the outs” in Dutch culture.
He only gets half the picture - he does not see that the Enlightenment was cradled in the lap of Christianity. Without Christianity there would be no Enlightenment. Not only does he typically misunderstand the idea of separation of Church and State (that in America it means the protection of the Church from the State while Canada, for example, sees no such need for this constitutional provision at all), he makes the same mistake that all Post-modernists make, namely that Freedom of Speech was necessary to free people from Christianity. He has it precisely backwards.Maybe we all need to think this over a little. Is the whole freedom discussion being hijacked by those that see its greatest expression in being able to consume 'shrooms? Have we lost so much of our heritage that the only thing we can think of when we talk of 'liberty' is: to do what we want to do, whenever we want to, without minding those around us?
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Labels:
freedom of speech,
netherlands,
Western Civ
On the principle that a good offence is the best kind of defence, Wilders recruited Holland's most famous lawyer, Bram Moszkowicz, to represent him in any future prosecution. Moszkowicz has been featured before on this blog: he is the one that is filing suit against Harry van Bommel and others, for participating in a virulantly antisemitic Gaza demonstration (scroll down to the update).
Moszkowicz isn't wasting his time defending Wilders either. He has already announced he will ask the Hoge Raad (High Council) for anullment of the ruling by the Amsterdam court of appaels. This on the grounds that the ruling left little room for conducting a fair trial, since the ruling had already declared Wilders guilty of 'incitement to hatred'. To be continued...
In the mean time, here are a couple of related links I thought were worthwhile. First, we have Caroline Glick (thanks to Sjaan) seeing parallels in the Wilders prosecution and the IDF's efforts to protect te identities of its soldiers, to shield them from possible prosecutions for alleged war crimes in Europe.
In an interview with *Ha'aretz* on Friday, Wilders claimed rightly that the Dutch court's decision to prosecute him was not a legal decision but a political one. And if he is convicted, his conviction won't be based on evidence. It will be based on the desire of the Dutch multiculturalists to make an example of him to appease the radical Muslims who seek his death, and intimidate any would-be disciples into keeping their mouths shut.One wishes it weren't so, but that seems to be an accurate description of our current predicament.
So too, if IDF veterans are indicted for war crimes, they won't be prosecuted based on facts. They will be persecuted to advance the prosecutors' and judges' goal of appeasing their homegrown radical Muslims who seek the destruction of Israel and who violently attack anyone perceived as supporting Israel.
A day before sending Wilders to trial, on the 20th of January 2009, a majority in the Dutch Parliament backed Ernst Hirsch Ballin, secretary of Justice, key member of the Christian Democrat Party (CDA) and orthodox Catholic, in his desire to outlaw every expression that insults any religion and ideology, and/or any of its members. Formally only in effect after its passing by the First Chamber, this bill revived a ‘dead’ law on blasphemy (article 137d) and an old criminal law (article 137c) that was aimed to curb the hate campaigns against Jews by the Dutch Nazi’s in the 1930s (Elsevier, 31/01/09).More importantly, Legger identifies where the true danger lies:
The Amsterdam Court, in its 33 pages Wilders-dossier openly sympathetic to the multi-cultural ideology of the Social Democratic Party (Elsevier, 31/01/09), immediately seized the opportunity. “Flaunting the fair trial principle”, professor Afshin Ellian of Leiden University’s Law Faculty stated, “the Court claims that Wilders has intentionally and consciously invoked discrimination, intolerance, contempt against Muslims, to cause fear and hatred. The Amsterdam Court has already sentenced Wilders”(De Volkskrant, 26/01/09). The real sentence by the lower criminal court will merely be “an official rubber stamp of already proven guilt”, Mr. Gerard Spong, leading lawyer and denunciator of Wilders, happily declared (De Volkskrant, 23/01/09).
In Holland, however, over the past five years a very close links been forged between "secular" and "religious’, leading to the subsequent curbing of free speech. In so doing, the CDA and the PvdA have changed the political rules and created a different game. Hence the erosion of traditional Dutch liberties observed by the Wall Street Journal observed is not caused by the Muslim immigration but by the desire of the Dutch political, cultural and religious elites to create a new, braver, Netherlands. A nation based on multi-culturalism and confessionalism – and not on the division of powers and freedom of speech.I can't stress enough the importance of this conclusion. Yes, jihadists are to be despised and fought. Yes, islam is an ideology up there with the worst of them. But do not get distracted in obsessing over muslims in the Netherlands. Their petulant demands would be so much sound and fury, signifying nothing, if not for the dhimmified elites of PvdA, CDA and all those other charlatans occupying seats in government, parliament, local and provincial councils. They are the real problem.
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Labels:
dhimmitude,
dutch politics,
geert wilders,
netherlands
From the comments to this piece on Gateway Pundit.
There are two kinds of people in the electorate: 1. People who remember how horrible the Jimmy Carter years were. 2. People who are about to find out.That would include all of us Euro's, BTW.
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Labels:
financial crisis,
US
As far as I am aware, this is a first for the MSM anywhere in the EUnion. And of course it happened in the UK. Janet Daley of the Telegraph writes what we in the conservative European corner of the blogosphere have known for years: In the EUnion democracy and sovereignty are dead. The Social Contract between a government and its constituency has been broken.
The immediate reason for this unexpected outburst of honesty are the wild-cat strikes at the Lindsey Oil Refinery in North Killingholme, UK.
The workers walked out in protest to 250 jobs being given to foreign workers instead of unemployed locals following the awarding of a specialist contract to an Italian firm.In the same posts mr. North already observed the 'elephant in the living room':
However, there is nothing at all that the government can do. Readers may dimly recall in 2007, two separate actions in the ECJ, one concerning the Rosella ferry and the other, about Laval un Partneri. (...)Back to mrs. Daley. She is also seeing the elephant, where others are still trying to be blind to its looming presence:
In both cases, the court upheld the employers' rights to employ cheaper, foreign workers. Also, in both cases, the court upheld the right of displaced workers (or those under threat of displacement) to take "collective action", although it also ruled that any such action would be illegal if it restricted the EU's rules on freedom of establishment.
What the strikers at the Lindsey oil refinery (and their brother supporters in Nottinghamshire and Kent) have discovered is the real meaning of the fine print in those treaties, and the significance of those European court judgments whose interpretation they left to EU obsessives: it is now illegal – illegal – for the government of an EU country to put the needs and concerns of its own population first. It would, for example, be against European law to do what Frank Field has sensibly suggested and reintroduce a system of "work permits" for EU nationals who wished to apply for jobs here.Citing occurrences of public dissatisfaction in Germany and France, last week, mrs. Daley observes a breaking down of the social contract between government and governed:
The protesters are simply demanding what they thought – what all free people have been taught to think since the 18th-century enlightenment – was their birthright. That is to say, for the basic principle of modern democracy: the understanding between the state and its people that the proper function of a government is to represent the interests of those who elected it. (...)Will the credit crunch be the wake-up call that ordinary citizens need to realize how much has been lost these last 30-40 years? Will the smell of the corpses of both freedom and sovereignty finally be strong enough to notice? And do we have the will to reckon with all those generations of our own politicians that stabbed them (and us) in the back?
In the grand abstract terms of the enlightenment, the legitimacy of government derives from the consent of the governed, and therefore no government should have the right to hand over its authority to some external body which is not democratically accountable to its own people. So when the framers of the EU arranged for the nations of Europe to do exactly that, they were repudiating the two centuries old political struggle for the rights and liberties of ordinary citizens, of government "of the people, by the people and for the people". (...)
And here we are, with a generation of European political leaders who almost all accept the terms in which their predecessors gave away the most important principle of that great democratic pact between a free people and its government. While times were good and there was enough prosperity to keep everybody distracted and happy, the loss went almost unnoticed except by a few persistent and despairing critics. Well, not any more.
"It's too retarded for words to allow a collective agreement that gives advantage to cheap East European labour over Dutch workers".Well, welcome to the EUnion, mr. Ulenbelt. It may be 'too retarded for words', but that is the EUnion for you. And there is not a damn thing you can do about it. And by the way, how did you vote, when the Lisbon Treaty came up in Second Chamber?
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Labels:
constitution,
EU,
sovereignty
