Time to unmask Muhammed

To know why Islam is a mortal danger one must not only consider the Koran but also the character of Muhammad, who conceived the Koran and the entirety of Islam. That is what Geert Wilders has told the nation in an article in struggling left-wing magazine HP De Tijd (NL).

Once again Geert Wilders came out guns blazing, educating the masses about the 'prophet' that established islam. He candidly repeats the indefatigable Ali Sani, stating that Muhammed was a narcissist, a paedophile, a mass murderer, a terrorist, a misogynist, a lecher, a cult leader, a madman, a rapist, a torturer, an assassin and a looter. Sina, btw,  has offered 50,000 dollars for the one who can prove otherwise. Nobody has claimed the reward as yet, writes Wilders.

But it doesn't just end there. Wilders also openly discussed what has been said about Muhammeds mental health by various experts.

According to the historian Theophanes (752-817) Muhammad was an epileptic. Epileptic crises are sometimes accompanied by hallucinations, perspiration form the forehead and foaming at the mouth, the very symptoms which Muhammad displayed during his visions.

In his book “The other Muhammad” (1992) the Flemish psychologist dr. Herman Somers concludes that in his forties the “prophet” began to suffer from acromegaly, a condition caused by a tumor in the pituitary gland, a small organ that is situated just below the brain. When the tumor in the pituitary gland causes too much pressure in the brain, people start to see and hear things that are not there. Somers’s psychopathological diagnosis of Muhammad’s condition is: organic hallucinatory affliction with paranoid characteristics.

The German medical historian Armin Geus speaks of a paranoid hallucinatory schizophrenia. A similar analysis can be found in the book “The Medical Case of Muhammad” by the physician Dede Korkut.

The venue for this article, HP De Tijd is a curious one (and that is putting it mildly). In the recent past this magazine has proven itself to be a staunch and stalwart member of the left-wing elite of our nation, either staying silent about Geert Wilders, or accusing him of all manner of human depravity. Geenstijl (NL) thinks the move by the magazine to publish what is potentially political dynamite, is inspired by the will to score one last time before the struggling magazine vanishes into oblivion.

This article was published along-side an article on the identity crisis afflicting the Christian Democrats, which contains a strap-line reading in part "Wilders' statement are unnecessarily tasteless". Undoubtedly, this article will raise a few hackles with those members of the CDA that weren't in favour of entering the Danish model cabinet to begin with. Geenstijl at least is pre-emptively wishing our PM, Mark Rutte, the best of luck with his apologies. Politically, the next few days may be quite uncomfortable for the coalition cabinet.

The good people of the PVV fraction in Second Chamber have provided us with the translation of the full text of the article. It can be found on page II of KV. It contains some strong stuff. Stuff that would have been unutterable, let alone unpublishable, even a few years ago. That an established opinion magazine is now printing this seems to prove that the Netherlands at least is slowly waking up and starting to ask questions about the real character of islam.

Wilders Trial day 14

Today was the ruling in the Wilders trial about a possible dismissal of the trial. Some people hoped the whole trial would be dismissed so The Netherlands would be spared this whole embarrassing anti Free speech trial. But the Dutch court ruled otherwise and rejected nearly all defense claims against the trial. The court only ruled in favor of a claim that the prosecutor did not get a mandate for prosecuting Wilders for his statement: "I don’t like the Koran ban that fascist book". But the court explicitly added to this ruling that the prosecution can prosecute Mr. Wilders for his Koran comparison with Mein Kampf. Also the court said it will make this a separate ruling that can be appealed (and therefor possibly opening the door for further trials against Mr. Wilders).

Directly after these rulings the court wanted, after a short recess, continue with the trial against Mr. Wilders. When the defense lawyer protested about this change in schedule, because he had other obligations, the court president just left the room during his protest saying: "we will see". After the short recess the court president claimed that this schedule was already send to the defense. Defense lawyer Moszkowicz was not amused and complained to the court that he thought it was amazing that the president of the court just walked out of a defense complained in such uncivilized way. The court declared they would continue without the defense lawyer and asked if Mr. Wilders would stay. Wilders declared he would stay, but only to hear the prosecutions plea. The matter resolved itself when the prosecution decided to only give a short vocal summery of its plea.

But the hostility of the court towards the defense showed again during the scheduling of the trial. When Moszkowicz requested a scheduling change to be able to prepare his defense, because the scheduling changes left him less than one day to prepare, the president of the court answered him that he also could work the night, adding that everybody knows how diligent he is.



The next trial day in the Wilders trial is now scheduled for April 13. Then the court will hear the witnesses Hans Jansen, Bertus Hendriks and judge Schalken about the infamous dinner party that lead to the downfall of the previous court because they refused hearing Mr. Jansen on this dinner. During the dinner judge Schalken, one of the judges who ordered this trial against Mr. Wilders, had tried to influence Hans Jansen only a day before his testimony in court as an expert witness.

Interesting news is that judge Schalken has let the court know, that he will be supported by a lawyer in order to protect his rights. His testimony has the potential to severely further undermine the legitimacy of the trial because Wilders has filed legal charges against Schalken. Imagine what will happen to the legitimacy of this trial, when the judge who ordered the trial against Mr. Wilders will now refuse to answer questions on grounds that can be perceived as protecting himself against self-incrimination.

The court decided that they will be hearing the witnesses in the following order: first Hans Jansen, then judge Schalken and last Bertus Hendriks who organized the dinner and is a friend of Schalken. The court will first ask questions, then the prosecution and at last the defense. But defense lawyer Moszkowicz protested against this arrangement, but did not provide details. He will provide these details of his protest in a writing letter to the court.



The prosecutor also protested. It protested against the speaking schedule of the plaintives. Under Dutch law the plaintives can speak at the end of a criminal trial in order to let the court know about their damages, so the court can include their compensation in the ruling. This arrangement avoids that victims need to start their own compensation trials, for compensations that are under Dutch law are very minimal. But unlike regular criminal trials, these plaintives at best only have hurt feelings and their compensation can only be a verdict in a trial they themselves have requested.

The court decided however, to schedule the hearing of the plaintives not at the end of the trial, but before the prosecution will held its plea. This is not how the law is intended argued the prosecutor, as the plaintives should not be part of the criminal trial. The court answered they were aware and they have made the decision deliberately. The defense stayed silent during this exchange between the court and the prosecution.

Latest court schedule:
April 13, 2011: Dinner witnesses hearing
April 15, 2011: Defense can respond to today’s ruling
May 2, 2011: Ruling on appeal
May 4, 2011: Trial dossier will be read by the court and plaintives will speak
May 23, 2011: plaintive Prakke will speak
Other trial days are still unscheduled

Update:
Geert Wilders @ twitter (March 30, 12:30):

"Ruling of Amsterdam court disappointing. Still convinced of acquittal. I will never remain silent: column about Mohammed in HP/De Tijd today"

Update (2):
HP/De Tijd today published an essay of Geert Wilders titled: Mohammed had brain disorder (NL). With the article Wilders want to start a debate about the true nature of prophet Mohammed and writes that Mohammed suffered from a brain tumor and was schizophrenic: "if a tumor in the pituitary gives over pressure on the brain, people see and hear thing that are not there". A claim that is supported by research psychologist Herman Somers who wrote the book: The Other Mohammed (1992) (Dutch title: De andere Mohammed).
Wilders hopes to reach out to Muslims worldwide by giving them insight and support into leaving Islam. Wilders: "Apostates are heroes. More than ever they deserve the support of all freedom loving people in the world. This is beyond party politics. It’s about time we help these people by unmasking Mohammed".

Update 3:
Paul Belien's Brussels Journal has just published the English version of the HP/De Tijd essay: "Time To Unmask Muhammad - by Geert Wilders"


See also: Wilders Trial day 13

Full re-run

From Elsevier (NL): Wilders trial to continue.

The court of justice of Amsterdam has decided to continue the trial against leader of the PVV, Geert Wilders. Defence attorney Bram Moszkowicz earlier argued that the public prosecutor nor the court are eligable to try the case. (...)

Moszkowicz was ruled in the right for one of his complaints against the public prosecutor. Wildes cannot be prosecuted for comparing islam to fascism. However, that is not sufficient to halt the trial.

Moskowics' argument that the public prosecutor went beyond its brief by adding complaints that were not in the original file was also ruled insufficient. For instance, some statements from the file Fitna were not in the original brief, but are malignant enough to be entered into the file, according to the Amsterdam court.

Curiously, the public prosecutor is also allowed to prosecute Wilders for racial discrimination. Is the Amsterdam court really of the opinion that islam is a race?

The case is set to continue today at 09:45 local time.

Keep an eye on Ireland

On the fringes of the news, we learn via Zerohedge that Ireland seems to be engaging in open rebellion against the Obsidian EUnion order.

Following Europe's decision to leave Ireland out in the cold, due to the country's ongoing unwillingness to pander with unilateral concessions to the global banking syndicate, the Emerald Isle has apparently decided to call the EU's bluff.

Reuters reports: "Ireland's government wants to impose losses on some senior bondholders in Irish lenders to reduce the burden on taxpayers from a prolonged banking crisis, a senior minister said on Sunday...Analysts widely expect the government to impose losses on senior bondholders in nationalized lenders Anglo Irish Bank and Irish Nationwide because they have sold their deposits and are being wound down. Hitting any unsecured unguaranteed senior bonds in Bank of Ireland and Allied Irish Banks (AIB), which amount to over 11 billion euros, would be more controversial."

Yet most controversial would be the fact that the Eurozone is now unable to control its wayward son, which seems set on actually following the will of its people than that of the plutocrats. And just like Tunisia set a precedent to the MENA region with an act many thought was unthinkable, should Ireland follow through with this near-revolutionary act of a debt impairing chain-reaction, most other countries are set to follow suit, leading not only to the inevitable end of the one currency block, expected for so long by many euroskeptics, but yet another US taxpayer funded bailout, as was revealed on Thursday of last week, when we observed the upcoming "threat to the international monetary system" as predicted by the IMF.

As of tonight, the MSM news in our small, damp corner of the world is that Ireland is still negotiating for more favourable terms (NL) on emergency financing by the EUnion and IMF to prevent 'emergency sell-offs' by Irish banks, precipitating a fresh round of bail-outs for which the Irish tax-payer will be made to assume ownership.

Actually, ZH is the only source I've read referring to the Irish defiance of the EUnion, so your mileage may vary, as they say. But I tend to agree (and hope for) the gist of the post: It Ireland imposes a haircut on senior and junior debts alike, banks and governments all over Europe will have to re-assess their posture.

Elsewhere, Irwin Stelzer of the Wall Street Journal, is having a field day with the newly arrived at European Stability Mechanism, comparing the lala-land resolve of the dedicated eurocrats to reality on the ground.

Greece and Ireland combined will cough up or guarantee €31 billion. That's right—the two countries that are on euro-zone life support. Portugal, soon to join them, is expected to contribute €18 billion. Spain, although doing a bit better, is exposed to €77 billion of Portuguese debt, the credit ratings of 30 of its banks have just been downgraded, and so remains in the sights of the bond vigilantes: It is counted on for €83 billion. Belgium, its credit standing already being questioned because of its governmental chaos and high deficit, is to drop a cool €24 billion into the collection box in cash and guarantees, and Italy, hardly the gold standard of sovereign debtors, another €125 billion.

Oh, by the way. This bailout mechanism doesn't become available until mid-2013. That means that Portugal, a government-free zone, its banks dependent on the European Central Bank for funds, its economy contracting, its ratings cut again by Fitch and by Standard & Poor's, almost out of cash and facing debt repayments of €10 billion in April and June, will have to rely on the existing bailout fund. No worry: There is enough to finance a Portuguese bailout, even without the agreed increase (how the boost is to be funded has not been decided) in the current European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF). But to be eligible for the bailout money the new government will have to adopt an austerity program of the sort Portugal's parliament has just rejected.

Mr. Stelzer also notes something we huddles grey masses of the EUnion would do well to remember: None of these defects will be addressed by the economic government Mr. Sarkozy has in mind. Instead, that 'economic government' is only meant to cement the hold the EUnion has on our daily lives, without local state governments running interference with old-fashioned notions of democracy and sovereignty.

Be that as it may, keep an eye on Ireland the coming days. After the shameful perversion of the 'vox populi' in the two referenda (see here and here), the Emerald Isle may yet prove to be the undoing of the EUnion.

The Failure of Multiculturalism and How to Turn the Tide

Completely unreported in the Dutch MSM, here's Geert Wilders' speech in Rome, last Friday March 25 (thanks to the PVV parliamentary fraction for the email heads-up). Take the time to read the entire thing. There is some good stuff to be had.

The Failure of Multiculturalism and How to Turn the Tide

Speech Geert Wilders, Rome, 25 March 2011

Signore e signori,ladies and gentlemen, dear friends of the Magna Carta Foundation, molte grazie. Thank you for inviting me to Rome. It is great to be here in this beautiful city which for many centuries was the capital and the centre of Europe’s Judeo-Christian culture.

Together with Jerusalem and Athens, Rome is the cradle of our Western civilization – the most advanced and superior civilization the world has ever known.

As Westerners, we share the same Judeo-Christian culture. I am from the Netherlands and you are from Italy. Our national cultures are branches of the same tree. We do not belong to multiple cultures, but to different branches of one single culture. This is why when we come to Rome, we all come home in a sense. We belong here, as we also belong in Athens and in Jerusalem.

It is important that we know where our roots are. If we lose them we become deracinated. We become men and women without a culture.

I am here today to talk about multiculturalism...

Continued on page II of KV

To actually measure

In what WUWT terms a 'bombshell conclusion', a new, peer-reviewed paper observes from actual (and not modelled, 'predicted') data that there is no acceleration in sea level in U.S. tide gauge records during the 20th century. Instead the records show small decelerations that 'are consistent with a number of earlier studies of worldwide-gauge records'.

So we are not going to drown, one and all? That is good news, don't you think? Remember Tuvalu and the maudlin wailing and gnashing of teeth over its imminent demise? Like much of the AGW narrative, when model results are contrasted to real world observations, the model turns out to be male bovine manure every time.

Of lions and donkeys

With growing bemusement I've been watching the Western world, David Cameron and Nicolas Sarkozy in particular, going all George W Bush on Muhammar Khadaffi. What a difference a few years make. Back in 2003 GWB was a stupid and malignant little man, trying to bully his way to more oil (oil that would have been orders of magnitude cheaper had he just bought it from Saddam Hussein). But now we're supposed to all gather behind a pointless war cooked up by two of the most infernal Eurocrats not residing in Brussels.

And evidently we are.

NATO has now decided to launch an operation to enforce the arms embargo against Libya. All Allies are committed to meet their responsibilities under the United Nations resolution to stop the intolerable violence against Libyan civilians.

Our top operational commander, Admiral Stavridis, is activating NATO ships and aircraft in the Central Mediterranean. They will conduct operations to monitor, report and, if needed, interdict vessels suspected of carrying illegal arms or mercenaries. This will be done in close coordination with commercial shipping and regional organisations. And we will welcome contributions from NATO partners to our common endeavour.

At the same time, NATO has completed plans to help enforce the no-fly zone -- to bring our contribution, if needed, in a clearly defined manner, to the broad international effort to protect the people of Libya from the violence of the Gaddafi regime.

The Netherlands is expected to contribute (NL) F-16 fighters, supported by a KDC-10 aerial refueling tanker and the minesweeper HNLMS Haarlem.

In what could be described as a war, the pointlessness of which is on par with the clusterf.ck that gave us WW1 ( and let us pray it does not devolve into a disaster of the same scale) , any semblance of national interest seems to be missing. Even if the goal is to further democracy and Western-style freedom: Are these really the beneficiaries Western dreams are made of?

Wretchard neatly sums up the latter day squalor of the current order in the West:

After Barack Obama ditched President Mubarak, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia quickly understood that nothing could be taken for granted any more — and began to crack down hard on internal dissidents. Caroline Glick at the Jerusalem Post says that Washington has descended into “strategic dementia” — it is not acting in its own self-interest. Indeed it seems incapable of even apprehending where its interests lie.

That strategic insanity is now playing itself out in Libya, where against all odds a fourth rate dictator looks set to survive against three of the mightiest powers on earth simply because they have been led so incompetently. It is a totally self-inflicted epic fail; the triumph of auto-destruction. Explaining why British troops were marched into the maw of machine gun fire in the First World War, historian Alan Clark said it was because they were “lions led by donkeys”. Not all the courage in the world could compensate for stupidity. What phrase might be used to describe Barack Obama has not yet entered currency, but maybe “elephants led by donkeys” would be a start.

And do not think this is a failing of the USA only. Dr. North argues concisely that this exact same dementia of over-blown egos is guiding European actions. Actually, let us remember for when it may matter that it was France, with inexplicably fawning support of UK PM David Cameron, that instigated this pointless exercise of our military. In a time when the first order of business would appear to be to overcome the world-wide economic slump, one would think the cost of waging modern-day hyper-war on a few shabby T-72 tanks in a lot of empty desert is something wise men would forego.

But wise men are in short supply these days. In stead we have our lions out to fight the cause of donkeys with delusions of grandeur. We deserve better.

Invisible green disaster

In the Daily Mail a piece that shows up the ill effects of Europes obsession with wind power: Pollution on a disastrous scale. It deals with the polluted, dead and barren landscape in Inner-Mongolia that is left after mining for rare earths. One of these is neodymium, the element needed to make the magnets in wind turbines.

The reality is that, as Britain flaunts its environmental credentials by speckling its coastlines and unspoiled moors and mountains with thousands of wind turbines, it is contributing to a vast man-made lake of poison in northern China. This is the deadly and sinister side of the massively profitable rare-earths industry that the ‘green’ companies profiting from the demand for wind turbines would prefer you knew nothing about.

Hidden out of sight behind smoke-shrouded factory complexes in the city of Baotou, and patrolled by platoons of security guards, lies a five-mile wide ‘tailing’ lake. It has killed farmland for miles around, made thousands of people ill and put one of China’s key waterways in jeopardy.

This vast, hissing cauldron of chemicals is the dumping ground for seven million tons a year of mined rare earth after it has been doused in acid and chemicals and processed through red-hot furnaces to extract its components.

People living in the area were forced to move, after crops started to wither and fail, livestock became ill and died and even human inhabitants started to suffer.

Dalahai villagers say their teeth began to fall out, their hair turned white at unusually young ages, and they suffered from severe skin and respiratory diseases. Children were born with soft bones and cancer rates rocketed.

Official studies carried out five years ago in Dalahai village confirmed there were unusually high rates of cancer along with high rates of osteoporosis and skin and respiratory diseases. The lake’s radiation levels are ten times higher than in the surrounding countryside, the studies found.

Since then, maybe because of pressure from the companies operating around the lake, which pump out waste 24 hours a day, the results of ongoing radiation and toxicity tests carried out on the lake have been kept secret and officials have refused to publicly acknowledge health risks to nearby villages.

Your average greenie gets to feel all superior to you and me, because he can abide the monstrosities and the huge amount of subsidies they eat. And China is far away and invisible, isn't it? The green disaster taking place in Upper-Mongolia is not our concern. And if it was: It's all for the greater good, isn't it? Some sacrifices have to be made for us to lead sustainable lives. We can safely ignore the thousands of lives ruined by government money enabling the erection of wind farm after wind farm. We are green and sustainable! We live off the wind! Yay for us!

And in Upper-Mongolia crops wither, livestock perishes and children are born with soft bones. Keep that in mind the next time someone waxes lyrical about those giant white, bird-slashing monsters spoiling the land. I've said it before, I'm going to say it again: Environmentalists, eco-friendly, but people-hostile.

Treating a brain tumour with aspirin

Once again the discussion about head scarves reared its ugly head in Dutch politics. Jeanine Hennis (VVD) stated in an interview with De Pers (NL) that head scarves should be banned for state and/or city council employees in direct contact with the public.

Christian coalition party CDA reacted as if stung (NL), with MP Mirjam Sterk asking: 'What problem is the VVD trying to solve', adding that such a plan would work against the emancipation of (muslim) women.

Sterk is surprised a liberal (in the true sense of the word) like Hennis would want to infringe on a traditional freedom such as the freedom of religion. Hennis is arguing that freedom of religion is implicitly guaranteed by the freedoms of association and opinion. Legal guarantees of the freedom of religion are hence old-fashioned and obsolete.

Reporting in EN is here, courtesy of Esther.

This discussion has the usual suspects from the doctrinal liberal community out of the woodwork, arguing that in fact banning the head scarf means all religious symbols should be banned from public life. No crucifixes on the wall, no necklaces from which a cross or a start of David is suspended. But that is comparing apples to gooseberries, in that the rather in your face visibility of a head scarf does not even begin to compare in obnoxious presence to a modest necklace, often tucked under a shirt. Thus the controversy around head scarves is gleefully, if a bit cynically, abused to argue the secular liberal cause of freedom from religion, to argue that liberal secularism should be made the state religion. This is one aspect of the head scarve controversy that as tedious as it is predictable.


I find myself in the curious position of agreeing and disagreeing with both ladies. For starters I don't think head scarves are a big issue, for reasons I will get to. So, it is worthwhile to learn what problem exactly Hennis is trying to solve with her suggestion. But I don't agree that banning the head scarf for women working the counter at city hall is an unacceptable infringement of religious freedom. There is (still) a generally, if tacitly, accepted dress code in Dutch civilized society. Enforcing a ban on head scarves adheres to that dress code, just as much as the fact that t-shirts with over the top slogans are not allowed in city hall - citizen relations.

For a while it seemed the head scarf was slowly working itself into the unspoken dress code, accomodating young women from a certain religion to emancipate and take part in public life in a manner that (so it was argued) was most comfortable for them. But the curious phenomenon occurred that the louder the more dedicated elements in islam and the multicult pleaded special privileges for bearers of the head scarf, the more it was made a symbol of something not Dutch, of something anti-Dutch even. Muslims (and their multicult enablers) set themselves, their wives and their daughters apart from Dutch society, exactly by making such a big deal of the head scarf. Hence, it is quite natural  and to be expected that the resistance against and even loathing of that particular symbol is building. This is a phenomenon that is evident around Europe. It seems that this resistance is the reason for the ban, even if this reason is left unspoken, for obvious reasons (well, obvious to those familiar with suffocating tenets of PC-ness).

The modern day head scarf has been made a symbol, by islamic supremacists, of islams subjugation of the West and the world at large. It really doesn't matter if the head scarf is a traditional/cultural phenomenon or religiously mandated. Islamist say the scarf is mandatory for muslimas, hence it is a muslim symbol. But at the end of the day head scarves are a red herring. The fruitless and tediously predictable arguments for or against a head scarve ban are a convenient lightning rod, used to avoid dealing with the question that nobody in our current leadership wants to deal with: Islam, the West and their compatibility. The more time is spent on this fruitless argument, the less time and energy is devoted to dealing with the underlying issue: What, if any, is the place of islam in the West?

The head scarf is a minor issue, relative to the deeper one at the heart of the controversy. Which is why I can't be bothered about it, safe from the annoyance this chain of repeat moves causes me. Ban them or don't ban them, I really don't care. All I wish is that finally we start to realize that head scarves are a symptom, not the disease. A ban of head scarves would thus be a case of treating the symptom, but do exactly nothing in curing the disease: The patient has a tumour of the brain. The growth causes severe headaches. Ignoring the cause, we try to cure the headaches by prescribing aspirin. And while this may alleviate the pain for a few hours, it will do nothing to remedy the underlying cause of the headaches: the tumour.

But we can only do this for so long. Tumours kill, after all.

Wilders Trial day 13

Today in the 13th trial day it was the turn of the prosecutor to respond to request of the defense for dismissal of the trial (as argued by them on March 14th). The prosecutor's argument was precise, long winded and very technical. That made this trial day hard to follow for a lay person. But still this was not a day without strange incidents.

In his plea the prosecutor made the remarkable claim that in Wilders his Fitna movie a page was churned out of the Koran. But anybody who has seen Fitna knows there is no such scene in the movie.

It was not Wilders lawyer who responded to this false claim, but Wilders himself. At the end of this session he was allowed to make a statement and Wilders then told the court the prosecution should hold on to the facts and he told the court there was no scene in Fitna were a page was churned out of the Koran. Wilders wondered if the prosecution was already trying to anticipate of what would be in the follow up: Fitna 2. This can best be seen as a reference to the fact that Dutch government officials also made similar wild claims before he released Fitna. Salient detail: prosecutor Velleman was also part of the interdepartmental cartoon censoring working group and it was Velleman who lead the arrest by SWAT team of a Dutch cartoonist (but never started a trial). It is yet unknown to the general public what Velleman’s role was around the government responses around the time Fitna was to be released.

Hearing about the false claims of the prosecution the judge then asked the prosecution for a response. The prosecution quickly agreed and said Mr. Wilders was right, but that the film was indeed suggesting such a thing. The judge then said it was cleared up and continued and ended the trial day.

Next trial day will be March 30th when the court will rule if this trial can continue or will be dismissed.

See also:
Wilders Trial Day 11

Burning food

WUWT links to a interesting blog post concerning the high prices for food currently afflicting the world. The Global Dashboard suggests that these spikes in food prices are not, as the MSM in the West in general and the Dutch state broadcasters in particular would want you to believe, caused by ruthless speculators earning money from making people miserable.

No, it is caused by sanctimonious greenies driving their sanctimony-fueled vehicles hither and yon, looking down sanctimoniously on all those gas-gulpers polluting their streets.

Or, in more neutral, less acrimonious terms:

The Obama Administration has a respectable story to tell on food security in lots of ways: its Feed the Future initiative, particularly, put it in a genuine leadership position among G8 governments (although there are now lots of question marks over whether Congress will allow the program to go forward).
But on one aspect of US food policy, there’s a deafening silence: the government’s support for corn-based ethanol. Here’s Robert Hormats, Under-Secretary of State for Economic, Energy and Agricultural Affairs, on USAID’s blog:

World food prices have been increasing over the past six months, due to weather-related production losses and strong global demand. The growing demand is fueled by rapid expansion of middle-class households in emerging markets.

Er, hello? Let’s stop by at FAO’s Food Price Index (February data out today – you guessed it, another record high). What do they think is driving cereal prices upwards?

The increase in February mostly reflected further gains in international maize prices, driven by strong demand amid tightening supplies, while prices rose marginally in the case of wheat and fell slightly in the case of rice.

In other words, this is mainly about corn. And who’s the biggest corn exporter in the world? The United States.

And where is 40% of US corn production going this year? Ethanol, for use in US car engines.

What this suggests is that the spiking food price is mainly a spike in the price of maize, with 40% of total US production being used to produce ethanol fuel. Greenies and the governments who accommodate them are literally burning food to drive their eco-friendly cars around. And as a result many in developing countries aren't able to buy the food they need to feed their families. Tell that to your oh, so conscious and caring higher being of a neighbour or friend the next time you see him/her: People go hungry because greenies want to drive 'sustainably'.

Enviromentalists: Eco-friendly, but people hostile.

Electing a new people

After the uprising of the 17th of June
The Secretary of the Writers Union
Had leaflets distributed in the Stalinallee
Stating that the people
Had thrown away the confidence of the government
And could win it back only
By redoubled efforts. Would it not be easier
In that case for the government
To dissolve the people
And elect another?

Berthold Brecht, Die Welt, 1959

The Swedish government seems on a course to do exactly that which Berthold Brecht joked about during the DDR years. Via reader Guy Gadbois we get the news that illegal immigrants in Sweden will see their rights expanded.

Illegal immigrants in Sweden should in future have the right to government-funded healthcare and education, and be able to start their own companies, the government has agreed.

The move follows long negotiations between the smaller governing parties (the Centre, Liberal and Christian Democrat parties) who have long argued for more rights for undocumented migrants, and the Moderate Party, which has opposed the idea.

The Moderates have argued that giving such entitlements would legitimize people who have no right to be in Sweden.

The parties say there are still a number of questions to resolve, including the issue of who will pay for illegal immigrants' healthcare or the kind of care and education to which they will be entitled.

Blogger Cavatus is not impressed. Being illegal will be the most favourable way of living in Sweden in the future, he writes. As illegal you will have no social security number and can avoid being chased by the Swedish Tax Agency and the Enforcement Service. As illegal, you will work on the side and thus you won’t pay any income tax, just VAT. As illegal you will get free medical care, free schooling for you children and be allowed to start and run a company. The decision amounts to free immigration and a Sweden that will be de facto borderless.

This all in a time when things are made harder for the Swedes that pay the taxes that support the expanded benefits for these illegals. Sweden has one of the highest tax-burdens in the world. There is talk of raising the retirement age with two to three years, since even the Swedes are now finding that a welfare state in the long run is unsustainable. Swedes nowadays have to apply for sick leave, with many seeing their application turned down, despite their condition.

The news sketches the contours of the shape of Sweden these days: Swedes paying for the health-care and education of non-Swedes, who are encouraged to come in illegally, freeing them of the onerous Swedish taxes. How long until Swedes decide en masse to seek friendlier shores, leaving the Swedish elite with a new people they've elected?

Progress

"The days of permanently available electricity may be coming to an end ... Families would have to become used to only using power when it is available"

Behold the all new, 21st century progress... Not quite the same as the old progress, is it?

(via WUWT)