Christianity brought a thousand years of darkness down on Europe. The Enlightenment dispelled it. Now Islam threatens the continent with a deeper darkness.

A few brave individuals are fighting to keep the light of freedom burning.

One of those individuals is Geert Wilders, the Dutch MP who has dared to speak out against the Islamization of Europe.

His trial resumes today in Amsterdam.

Here is his speech to the court:

The lights are going out all over Europe. All over the continent where our culture flourished and where man created freedom, prosperity and civilization. Everywhere the foundation of the West is under attack.

All over Europe the elites are acting as the protectors of an ideology that has been bent on destroying us [for] fourteen centuries. An ideology that has sprung from the desert and that can produce only deserts because it does not give people freedom. The Islamic Mozart, the Islamic Gerard Reve [a Dutch author], the Islamic Bill Gates; they do not exist because without freedom there is no creativity. The ideology of Islam is especially noted for killing and oppression and can only produce societies that are backward and impoverished. Surprisingly, the elites do not want to hear any criticism of this ideology.

My trial is not an isolated incident. Only fools believe it is. All over Europe multicultural elites are waging total war against their populations. Their goal is to continue the strategy of mass-immigration, which will ultimately result in an Islamic Europe – a Europe without freedom: Eurabia.

The lights are going out all over Europe. Anyone who thinks or speaks individually is at risk. Freedom loving citizens who criticize Islam, or even merely suggest that there is a relationship between islam and crime or honour killing, must suffer and are threatened or criminalized. Those who speak the truth are in danger.

The lights are going out all over Europe. Everywhere the Orwellian thought police are at work, on the lookout for thought crimes everywhere, casting the populace back within the confines where it is allowed to think.

This trial is not about me. It is about something much greater. Freedom of speech is not the property of those who happen to belong to the elites of a country. It is an inalienable right, the birthright of our people. For centuries battles have been fought for it, and now it is being sacrificed to please a totalitarian ideology.

Future generations will look back at this trial and wonder who was right. Who defended freedom and who wanted to get rid of it.

The lights are going out all over Europe. Our freedom is being restricted everywhere, so I repeat what I said here last year:

It is not only the privilege, but also the duty of free people – and hence also my duty as a member of the Dutch Parliament – to speak out against any ideology that threatens freedom. Hence it is a right and a duty to speak the truth about the evil ideology that is called Islam. I hope that freedom of speech will emerge triumphant from this trial. I hope not only that I shall be acquitted, but especially that freedom of speech will continue to exist in the Netherlands and in Europe.

See our posts: The new heresy, January 11, 2011; An honest confession of hypocrisy, October 23, 2010; Civilization on trial, October 11, 2010; A stink of Fox, March 12, 2010; Freedom versus Islam, January 20, 2010; The West on trial, December 16, 2009.

Is religion the most frequent cause of death?

Do more people die from religion than from heart disease, cancer, or road accidents?

To take just one religion, the most lethal at present: Islam kills people every day.

Here’s one of today’s reported incidents of Death by Religion:

From the Washington Post:

A machete-wielding mob of Muslims on Sunday attacked the home of a minority sect leader in central Indonesia, killing three and wounding six others …

About 1,500 people – many with machetes, sticks and rocks – attacked about 20 members of the Ahmadiyah Muslim sect who were visiting their leader in his house in Banten province on Indonesia’s main island of Java. …

Ahmadiyah, believed to have 200,000 followers in Indonesia, is considered deviant by most Muslims and banned in many Islamic countries because of its belief that Muhammad was not the final prophet.

Think of it – right now, in this age of space exploration, nuclear power, the internet, some people are killing other people because they believe that a man who lived 1400 years ago was “not the final prophet”!

Surely this killing disease, religion, is curable?

We recently heard of a group of Muslims who went to a university in the West and there encountered Enlightenment literature. They were stunned by what they read. They have become secularist, possibly atheist. They plan to make themselves known as a group and speak about their discovery in the near future. If and when they do, we will be among the first to applaud them.

What does their story tell us but that superstition is a curable disease? It suggests that if the West only took the trouble to teach its values to the peoples who live in darkness – those billions of Others – it might achieve what wars have failed to: the subduing of the barbaric hordes, the ending of their persistent onslaught.

During the Cold War, America spoke to the Communist bloc through Radio Liberty and Radio Free Europe. The effort was made to tell the enslaved peoples that what their masters would have them believe was not true. Those broadcasts helped to bring the Wall down. Why is no such effort being made to give new ideas to the Muslims? Vast numbers of them are taught nothing but the Koran – or rather, have it beaten into them. For many of them it is in a language they don’t understand. And even if they know the language, much of what they learn to recite by heart is incomprehensible. Those suras that are intelligible are full of evil counsel and absurdity: “kill the infidel…”,  and a lot of solemn drivel about Djinns. Why doesn’t the secular West give them something better to think about?

Teach them to question ideas rather than dumbly accept them.

Teach them that freedom makes for a happier life, tolerance for a longer one.

It might be argued that many Muslims who live in the West are aware of Western values and ideas and still reject them in favor of Islamic dogma. True. And we may assume that there will always be some who cannot be cured of religion. But the probability is that there are many who can be, if only they were better informed.

Yes, we are urging “proselytizing” and “conversion” on a massive scale: not from one religion to another, but from religion to reason. (To oppose one religion by another – to think of Christianity, for instance, as a cure for Islam – is to misdiagnose the disease.)

It must be worth trying. A start could be made with young Muslims who are already in the West with a positive program of teaching critical examination.

We know that the nations who live more freely live more happily. We know that educated women make better mothers. We know that Muhammad wasn’t a “prophet”, and also that he won’t be the last to claim that title. Why don’t we say that sort of thing, loud and clear, to those who should hear it?

No more giving in to Muslim demands for the separation of the sexes, for special facilities in schools and work-places, for courts to take account of their “cultural traditions” such as honor killings and wife-beatings and the sly deceptions involved in “sharia compliant finance”. We have arrived at our ways for sound reasons, so let’s stick to them, and insist that any who come to live among us conform to them. Away with “multicultural” sentimentality and hypocrisy. For the most part, those other “cultures” contain far more that’s fearful and contemptible than is worthy of respect. And the intolerance of Islam is intolerable.

We’d like to teach the world to think. We’d like the Western powers to have a shared policy of continually lecturing the billions who live in darkness.

Let’s seize them by the ears and say, “Now listen here … !”

Jillian Becker   February 6, 2011

Howard Rotberg writes President Obama’s 2015 State of the Union address. It is satirical, but disturbingly close to the all-too-possible.

Here are parts of it from PajamasMedia:

… “While the United States, given its history, adopted a constitutional democracy, I have always taken the position that we cannot force the rest of the world to act like us, and that different cultures are as deserving of respect and tolerance as we are.

[applause]

“Accordingly, we accept the will of the people in the Middle East to act to restore and enhance their Caliphate.

[applause and standing ovation]

… “I received a tremendous amount of criticism for my position on the Iranian led war on Israel of 2013. However, it was Israel’s decision not to accept the proposal made jointly by America and the European Union that Europe was prepared to accept all Israeli Jews with European ancestry for resettlement in Europe, and that our country would accept all Israeli Jews with ancestry from the Arab, Asian, and African countries for resettlement in the United States. We pledged an enormous amount of money and resources for this effort, and it was rebuffed.

“But, still, I say to the remnants of Israeli Jewry, hiding out in the caves of the Judean desert: send us your survivors, your radiation-poisoned and cancer patients. No matter whether they can ever be productive citizens, the U.S. is pledged to assist in this humanitarian crisis.

[applause and standing ovation]

“And let me say to the Iranians: we are sorry that the Israelis launched so many nuclear weapons on your people, in their disproportionate response to your nuclear attack wiping out only one Israeli city. The injustice of that disproportionate response, wherein nearly 20 million Iranian men, women, and children were killed, stands as a light unto the nations as a warning of how we must accept tolerance over vengeance. One can certainly understand the outrage this stirred up in the Muslim world, although we cannot condone the atrocities against the Israeli Jews. …

“We are truly ashamed of the intolerant position of certain Evangelical Christians who have fought against the interests of their own country in this regard, and lost so many young men fighting overseas in the last battles for the Israeli cities.

“For without tolerance, who are we?

[applause]

… “And so, today, after all the bloodshed and all the suffering, a new Islamic identity prevails in the Middle East. We must accept that no Christians and no Jews are entitled to participate in that great nation. I am proud of our record in accepting truly notable numbers of refugees.

[applause]

“Today, I announce that just as we opened our borders to countless Jews and Christians, we are doing the same to permit immigration to America for the countless Muslims of the Middle East who are now choosing to escape the sectarian violence between Shias and Sunnis that has spread from Iraq throughout the entire Middle East. We accept responsibility for all of that, because, as I have reminded the American people many times, it was the fault of the Bush administration for starting an unwarranted war in Iraq and unleashing the sectarian tensions that more authoritative Muslim governments had tempered.

“Notwithstanding my many overtures to the Muslims of the Middle East, there are still so many who blame America for their problems of extreme poverty and internecine violence. Accordingly, I announce today a major move to convince the Islamic world that we in America truly welcome them, wherever they live. We truly are a tolerant nation, willing to have more Muslims immigrate here — for I have made it clear in many past speeches how Islam has played a positive force in America since the founding of our great nation.

[applause]

“My move today is to recognize that Americans cannot roam the world imposing our particular notions of liberty and democracy on the world. The world is composed of many people who find their liberty depends on a religious supervision of all aspects of their daily lives. …

“We recognize that not all people in the world accept our notions of liberty. … To demonstrate that we have learned that tolerance is the most important world value, and not a narrow definition of liberty, we are changing the name of the great statue just off the shore of New York from the Statue of Liberty to the Statue of Tolerance.

[applause, cheering and standing ovation]

“And to absolutely prove the seriousness of our tolerant new order, I have exercised my jurisdiction to order an alteration of the statue, so that instead of a crown on the statue’s head, there will be a hijab. …

Read all of it here.

Here’s Richard Dawkins.

We are not uncritical of his opinions. We disagree with him sharply on political questions. It seems to us he doesn’t really know anything about politics, but simply feels that nice guys are on the left, so his political views are of no interest. If you haven’t read the review of his book The God Delusion by C.Gee and want to, you’ll find a link to it in our margin.

We like this short video clip in which he talks about evolution (about which he has written great books), and the impossibility of arguing rationally with a person of religious faith.

The production of bio-fuels promotes hunger. Ethanol is the sacrifice of food to ideology.

Driven by its obsession with “green energy”, the left – whose heart, remember, is constantly aching for the wretched of the earth – has food turned into fuel (rather than drill for more oil in the Gulf of Mexico and Alaska). The result – the wretched of the earth go hungrier.

This is from Breitbart:

World food prices reached their highest level ever recorded in January and are set to keep rising for months, the UN food agency [Food and Agricultural Organization, FAO] said on Thursday, warning that the hardest-hit countries could face turmoil.

Some of them already have – Tunisia, Egypt, Jordan, Morocco, Mauritania, Algeria …

And in its latest survey, the Food and Agriculture Organisation said its index which monitors monthly price changes for a variety of staples averaged 231 points in January — the highest level since records began in 1990. …

The Index rose by 3.4 percent from December — with big increases in particular for dairy [cattle feed becomes more expensive because of the ethanol program], cereal and oil prices. …

The data from the Rome-based FAO showed that prices for dairy products rose by 6.2 percent from December, oils and fats gained 5.6 percent, while cereals went up by 3.0 percent because of lower global supply of wheat and maize. …

The Food Price Index hit 200 points over the whole of 2008 at the height of the 2007/2008 food crisis. It breached that level for the first time in October 2010 with 205 points. …

And this is from FrontPage Magazine:

One of the most common causes of societal discontent, the very factor that led to the ongoing Egyptian protests, is hunger. Unfortunately, worldwide global warming fanaticism has only contributed to this plight. By consuming ever-expansive portions of the world food supply for the production of green bio-fuels, the left has increased the cost of food for those who can least afford it. This has caused much undue suffering for the world’s poor and significantly exacerbated Third World instability — and Egypt is no exception. …

Today, we’re seeing that effect in Egypt and we’re going to see more of it throughout the world unless we can fix the growing worldwide food crisis. We’ve been skating on thin ice, in terms of food supply, for more than a decade now. Between 2000 and 2010, the World Food Price Index, the inflation-adjusted measure of how expensive food is across the globe, almost doubled. In 2000 the index sat at a value of 90. By 2010, the index had risen to a value of 172. That’s a 91% increase in the cost of food over the course of a decade. …

Between 1999 and 2009, the amount of cropland used to grow wheat in America dropped by over 3 million acres, or almost 5 per cent. … The amount of land used to grow rice dropped over 15 per cent; for oats, over 30 per cent; for rye, over 20 per cent; for peanuts and edible beets, over 25 per cent; and for sugarbeets, a shade under 25 per cent. These are some of the commodities that are used, directly and indirectly, to produce the food that once fed the world. And, those statistics are just a few highlights, or lowlights if you will, of the overall trend.

In the US, farmers use ever more land to grow “energy-crops” – chiefly corn and soybeans – because they are subsidized by the government, and ever less for crops that can only be eaten.

Overall, the amount of United States cropland used to grow basic food commodities — crops other than corn and soybeans — has decreased by over 22 million acres since 1999. …

The American taxpayer … ultimately pays the bill for the bio-fuel incentive programs that make growing energy crops more profitable than providing nutrition to the globe.

It’s ironic that the United Nations should be warning about the disastrous results of the food-into-fuel policy, since it is the central church, the Vatican one might say, of the “green” religion.

But don’t take my word for it, consider instead the viewpoint of the organization that has been pushing global warming hysteria harder than anyone this side of Al Gore: the United Nations. According to the UN, almost 10 per cent of world grain production – that’s about 100 million metric tons per year – goes for bi-fuel production. They expect that number to double by 2018. The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization says that “competition between the three Fs (food, feed and fuel) is expected to intensify,” which is probably about as close in tone to criticism that one branch of the UN is going to use about another branch: the International Panel on Climate Change.

So it seems that the left has now become more sentimental about the planet than about the poor.

Michelle Obama and her fans might try fussing less about Americans being too fat and think more (if think they can) about why other nations are too thin.

President Bush tried to democratize the Arab Middle East. It was an effort worth making. But did he understand what he was up against?

In his World Economic Forum Address, delivered at Sharm el Sheikh International Congress Center, Egypt, on May 18, 2008, he said:

“Democracies do not take the same shape; they develop at different speeds and in different ways, and they reflect the unique cultures and traditions of their people.”

This is typical waffle of Western statesmen trying to accommodate multicultural “values” when speaking of dysfunctional polities.

There is some variety among national democracies, differences in types of representation and electoral process – administrative differences – which may reflect local mores and preferences, but these are superficial. True democracies, the ones which allow for change of government and limits upon government, do not reflect the “unique cultures and traditions” of their people: they reflect a core Western (British) cultural development, a tradition of limiting absolute power constitutionally. This political principle – like the zero in mathematics – may have originated within one culture, but it is of benefit to all mankind in the establishment of national political institutions. It is through these institutions that we know freedom (civil rights, the freedoms of speech, assembly, religion, the individual protected from the predations of power). Democracy is a superior idea, and the West should continue to offer it – insist on it – to nations which have inferior arrangements. Diluting the idea by allowing for local versions of power-sharing to substitute for it is foolish. For example, I do not count the loya jirga, the traditional tribal forum for dispute arbitration, as a cultural equivalent of democratic government, nor can I see how it could form the institutional basis for a national democracy as it enshrines tribal power. Societies which borrow the trappings of democracy – elections – without the civil institutions that sustain the core principle are parodies of democracy (one-party communist states, kleptocracies, oligarchies, autocracies, theocracies). There is a distinct element of parody in setting up national arrangements which submit to local traditions by enshrining sectarian power, by having individuals of different sects take up different political offices (as in Lebanon).

When the West allows parodies of democracy to be installed because this shape of democracy “reflects the unique culture and tradition of [a] people”, it is relegating the people to more of the (not so unique) culture and tradition of absolute power: dynastic, tribal, sectarian, ideological powers asserting themselves and oppressing their rivals for as long as they have strength of arms and/or superior numbers (not to be confused with a democratic majority).

Allowing the Muslim Brotherhood power, or Shia equivalents, or communists for that matter, in Egypt would not be an expression of freedom, nor an example of democracy in action. These are not political parties, they are absolute powers waiting to seize office. The West has long established that one may not sell oneself into slavery. That idea is incorporated into the idea of democracy: an electorate may not vote itself out of sovereignty.

Obama is making a very grave error – as have administrations before him – in allowing totalitarians opportunities to take power at all, but to do so under the pretense that their elected accession to power reflects “democratic self-determination” or some collective expression of “freedom” is an appalling betrayal of democratic principles. The Nobel peace prizewinner is guaranteeing that there will be blood …

C.Gee   February 2, 2011

Any hope that revolution in Egypt might lead to democratization must be abandoned now that Obama has taken steps to assist the Muslim Brotherhood into power. President Mubarak banned it with good reason.

It should come as no surprise that Obama is doing this. He’s been helping to empower Islam from the moment he became president. His heart is with Islam. He has no objection to the Muslim Brotherhood. About a year ago Tariq Ramadan, grandson of the Muslim Brotherhood’s founder Hassan al-Banna and proselytizer-in-chief for the organization, who had been kept out of the United States in the Bush years, was given a visa by the Obama administration (see our post, Enter the general of soft jihad, January 23, 2010).

The Muslim Brotherhood openly works for world domination by Islam. From its inception in Egypt in 1928 it called for the re-establishment of the Islamic Empire. Although in recent years its tactic has been to work at conquering the world by non-violent means, infiltration and proselytizing, it’s motto, “Jihad is our path; martyrdom is our aspiration“, makes plain that it has not and will not renounce traditional, sacred, violent jihad. Hamas and al-Qaeda are two of its off-shoots. (Ayman al-Zawahiri,  co-leader of al-Qaeda, joined the Muslim Brotherhood in his early adolescence.)

The prospect darkens.

From RedState:

From 2008 to 2009, Planned Parenthood received $363 million in government grants and contracts — our tax dollars. …

New footage released just this morning shows a Planned Parenthood manager in New Jersey coaching a man and a woman posing as sex traffickers on how to secure secret abortions and other services for their female underage sex slaves.

The Planned Parenthood manager explains to the “pimp” how to make their operation “look as legit as possible” and how to lie to avoid mandatory reporting laws.

Watch it all through. The worst comes towards the end.

The profession of warrior is as respectable as any other, unless the warrior sells his skill to serve an evil cause.

The government of Somalia considered hiring Saracen International, a South African mercenary firm, to fight pirates and Islamic militants. A disapproving report in the New York Times may have squashed the idea.

Jeff Jacoby writes at Townhall:

That negative publicity may have undone the deal. The Times subsequently reported that Somali authorities “have cooled to the idea” of hiring private militiamen. “We need help,” a government official was quoted as saying, “but we don’t want mercenaries.”

Somalia certainly does need help. It is one of the world’s most unstable and violent countries. … It has been wracked for years by bloody insurgencies, and the central government, what there is of it, is under constant assault by al-Shabab, a lethal jihadist movement closely tied to al-Qaeda. Pirates plying the waters off Somalia’s shores menace international shipping.

The place is a hellhole, and each day that it remains one is another day of death and devastation for more innocent victims. Who is going to help them? The 8,000 peacekeeping troops sent in by the UN are inadequate to the job. “Western militaries have long feared to tread” there, as even the Times acknowledges. So why shouldn’t the Somali government turn to private militias for the help it so desperately needs?

It is fashionable to disparage mercenaries as thugs for hire, but private-sector warriors are as old as combat itself. Americans may dimly remember learning in grade school about the Hessian mercenaries who fought for the British during the American Revolution, but other mercenaries fought for American independence. … Many mercenaries have been heroes of American history. Among them are John Paul Jones, who became an admiral in the Russian Navy; the Pinkerton security firm, which supplied intelligence to the Union and personal protection for Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War; the Lafayette Escadrille, a squadron of American airmen who fought for France in World War I; and the Montagnards, the indigenous tribesmen who fought alongside American soldiers during the war in Vietnam. …

This is not an abstract argument. When Rwanda erupted in mass-murder in 1994, the private military firm Executive Outcomes offered to stop the slaughter for $150 million … The Clinton administration turned down the offer. In the ensuing carnage, some 800,000 Rwandans were killed.

In 1995, by contrast, the government of Sierra Leone hired Executive Outcomes to put down a savage rebellion by the brutal Revolutionary United Front. Within a year, the company had quelled the uprising and driven the rebels out. …

It may not be politically correct to suggest letting mercenaries deal with nightmares like Somalia and Darfur. But political correctness doesn’t save lives. Sending in mercenaries would.

For a state or nation to hire the expertise it lacks is eminently sensible. Somalia should hire mercenary soldiers; Zimbabwe and California should hire mercenary free-market economists; the Palestinians and Pakistanis should hire mercenary brains; the Germans should hire mercenary humorists.

But why stop there?

Many a failed state could turn into a law-and-order polity with a thriving economy if it would hire an administration.

It need not pick the personnel from one country only. It should make up a team consisting of the most competent administrators from a number of countries, most obviously the United States, Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Switzerland.

And why not hire a judiciary as well – from the same pool of mostly Anglophone lands where commonsense, rationality, learning, fair-mindedness, humane restraint, probity, and the capacity to adjudicate objectively may still be found?

The hiring state would continue to make its own laws, but would have to be open to the advice of the imported administration and judges as to what laws could and should be enacted if it wasn’t to waste its money.

We float this idea on the ether because it is a good one. We mean it seriously, but would be astonished if it were taken seriously by any failing state. We know that we don’t yet have the clout even of the failing New York Times.