A turning point for Europe? 152
Is it too late for Europe to save itself from Muslim conquest?
Bruce Bawer surveys the battlefield that Europe has (yet again) become, and suggests that the tide of war may be turning.
He writes at Front Page:
For Western Europe, 2016 began with an apocalyptic frenzy, a nightmarish vision of its possible future – namely, an avalanche of brutal sexual assaults, over a thousand of them, committed on New Year’s Eve by savage Muslim gangs in the streets and squares of Cologne and several other major German cities.
The horrific events of New Year’s Eve didn’t happen out of the blue, of course. For over a generation, thanks to irresponsible immigration policies that had never been submitted for approval to any electorate, as well as to straightforward demographic realities, Western Europe had been steadily Islamized. At first in a few large cities and eventually even in small, remote towns, the presence of Islam became more and more visible.
Over time, government officials who had made these developments possible, and who had cut back their own citizens’ welfare-state entitlements in order to feed, clothe, and house newly arrived Muslims, were rewarded not with the gratitude and assimilation they had expected but with the exact opposite. Steadily, Muslim communities developed into crime-ridden, sharia-governed enclaves, increasingly explicit in their hostility to infidels, increasingly aggressive in their rejection of the values of their host cultures, and increasingly insistent on their legal independence from secular authorities. Forced marriage, female genital mutilation, and honor killing became European problems. Hijab proliferated, then (in some places at least) niqab.
And authorities reacted to all of it with a feckless passivity.
Along with the quotidian reality of stealth jihad came jihad of the more headline-grabbing sort: terrorism. …
The writer goes on to recall Muslim terrorist attacks in the Netherlands, Spain, Britain, France. Also the massacres resulting from the publication in Denmark of cartoons of Muhammad.
Each time, mainstream media and public officials made haste to insist that the atrocities had nothing to do with Islam, to reaffirm their dedication to the policies that made this bloodshed possible, and to shower Europe’s Muslims with inane, unmerited praise.
Europeans didn’t have to be familiar with Islamic theology to understand that, like it or not, they were at war. And they didn’t need to know the term dhimmi to recognize that their elites were kowtowing to would-be conquerors. These elites inhabited a bubble of privilege, protected from the consequences of their own policies. Most Western Europeans did not. In the space of a few years, they’d seen their neighborhoods dramatically transformed. Their once-safe streets were dangerous. Their children were harassed at school. Jews, especially, were terrorized. There was no sign of a reversal in this rapid process of civilizational decline and destruction. And if they tried to discuss the issue honestly, they risked being labeled bigots, losing their jobs, and even being put on trial.
Here and there, voters found, and supported, politicians who articulated their concerns. But the political establishment erected cordons sanitaires around them, denying them power and, when possible, dragging them, too, into court. Instead of heeding the voice of the people, officials doubled down.
And then came the final straw: in August 2015, Western Europe’s most powerful leader, Angela Merkel, invited all Syrian refugees to come to Germany. The floodgates opened even wider. Syrian refugees poured in – but most of them proved to be neither Syrians nor refugees. Naive do-gooders who welcomed these monsters into their homes ended up being raped and robbed.
And the terrorist attacks became even more frequent. On November 13, 2015, jihadists slaughtered 130 people in and around the Bataclan Theater in Paris. Then came the aforementioned New Year’s Eve carnage. Brussels was hit in March, with 32 civilian deaths. On Bastille Day, a truck-driving terrorist mowed down 86 pedestrians on the Promenade des Anglais in Nice. And these were just a few of the jihadist offenses committed in Western Europe during this period.
As I write this, a Turkish cop shouting “Allahu akbar!” has just gunned down Russia’s ambassador to Turkey, and – shades of Nice – a truck driven by a Muslim has plowed into a busy Christmas market in the center of Berlin, killing at least 12 and injuring dozens. (P.S. Apparently Merkel heard of the attack shortly after attending a celebration of the “International Day of Migrants”. This is not a joke.)
The good news is that this year’s spikes in out-of-control immigration and in jihadist terror appear to have been accompanied – at last – by an equivalent spike in outrage. Western Europeans’ fury over the relentless rise of Islam in their midst – and at the complicity, and complacency, of their leaders – may finally have reached a tipping point.
On June 23, defying the counsel (and upending the predictions) of virtually the entire U.K. political, cultural, business, ecclesiastical, academic, and media elite, the people of Britain voted to quit the EU, reinstate their national borders, and establish proper immigration controls – an act that voters in several other EU countries now yearn to replicate.
This month, not long after Donald Trump won an equally stunning triumph against his own nation’s see-no-evil establishment, a referendum in Italy rejected an attempted power grab by their insouciant elites.
The winds are shifting. Merkel’s approval ratings have plummeted, raising the odds that her party will go down to defeat in next year’s parliamentary elections, which will probably be held in September. Meanwhile, in France, presidential hopeful and outspoken Islam critic Marine Le Pen’s numbers are rising in the run-up to that country’s April elections. Since a kangaroo court declared him guilty of anti-Islamic hate speech on December 9, Geert Wilders, the already highly popular head of the Netherlands’ Freedom Party, has won even more support.
I gave a talk in Rome a few days after Trump’s win, and was surprised when several members of the audience, including a history professor, came up to me afterwards and voiced strong pro-Trump sympathies. From their perspective, the Donald had come along just in the nick of time, giving the entire West a desperately needed jolt of hope. Their sentiment: we may win this one after all.
In November 1942, after British forces defeated General Ernst Rommel in the Second Battle of El Alamein, bringing the Allies their first major victory in World War II, Winston Churchill famously said: “This is not the end. This is not even the beginning of the end. But it may be the end of the beginning.” In these closing days of 2016, it can feel, very much as it did in late 1942, as if the effort by at least some freedom-loving Europeans to push back the tide of tyranny – an effort that for many years seemed quixotic – is finally making some headway. Is this the end of the beginning? We can hope so. But it’ll take more than hope to win this struggle. Among other things, it’ll take a Churchill. Preferably a few of them.
Churchills are very rare. Trumpists are what Europe needs, and they – Bruce Bawer found – are rising.
Mass schizophrenia in Angela Merkel’s Germany 148
Last New Year’s Eve, in Cologne, Germany, “an estimated two thousand exclusively Muslim men raped, assaulted and robbed more than 1200 women” among the crowd gathered in the main square fronting the city’s famous cathedral.
Almost all the attackers have managed to walk free. Ralf Jäger, Interior Minister of North Rhine-Westphalia, admitted recently that “most of the cases will remain unsolved”.
Yesterday, December 19, 2016, a Muslim jihadi drove a truck at speed into a crowd at a Christmas Market in Berlin. At least 12 people were killed (more may die), and some 50 others were injured.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel, in the middle of a re-election bid, has stuck to her claim that there is “no connection” between terror attacks in the country and uncontrolled mass migration from Arab and Muslim lands.
So there is no reason to expect that crowds gathered to celebrate this New Year in public places in Germany – in, say, Cologne’s cathedral square – will be subject to attack by Muslim immigrants.
None at all.
In fact, the city authorities are preparing for the festivities without a care in the world for anything but traditional jolliness and fun:
The Mayor of Cologne, Henriette Reker, is planning to put on a big show this coming New Year’s Eve in the city’s main square. … The city will be lighting up the crime scene as part of a multi-media show.
“Cologne will send good images to the world,” says the city’s mayor. The taxpayer-funded spectacle has been named Time Drifts Cologne. The “light artist” running the show, Philipp Geist, considers last year’s crime scene “a fantastic place for an art installation.”
“Fantastic”. Yes. Fantasyland is another name for Europe now.
Art. Fun. Happy gatherings for customary celebrations. No connection between terror attacks and Muslims. No reason to expect them in Cologne, on the cathedral square, on New Year’s Eve. And so:
An estimated 1,800 police officers will be on duty in Cologne on New Year’s Eve, compared to just 140 last year. Barricades have been erected in the city center to check the flow of the crowd. The city’s historic cathedral and adjoining area have been placed under a crush barrier. Police will man observation posts and fly helicopters to monitor the crowd, and deploy mounted police and six armoured vehicles for riot-control. “No expense will be spared,” assured the mayor. In an important election year, the government wants to defend the city to the last taxpayer dime.
Did they say “fantastic”? Did we say “fantasy”? “Schizophrenia” would be a better word. Mass shizophrenia in Merkel’s Germany.
We have taken our quotations from an article at Gatestone by the Indian writer, resident in Europe, Vijeta Uniyal.
Unwilling to acknowledge the breakdown of law and order in face of the rising migrant crime wave, the German media and politicians are going after the messenger.
Their latest target is the head of German Police Union, Rainer Wendt. Wendt’s crime, after a series of rape crimes this December, was to speak the obvious truth. “The criminals are using open borders,” he said.
Ralf Stegner, deputy leader of Social Democratic Party (SPD) and a fervent supporter of Merkel’s “Refugees Welcome” policy, denounced Wendt’s statement as “politically disgusting and stupid as one can get”.
Wendt has also been attacked for questioning the customary kid-glove treatment given to violent and criminal “refugees” by German courts.
Sven Rebehn, Chairman of the German Association of Judges, called Wendt, “the Donald Trump of domestic politics” – apparently the biggest insult a German liberal can come up with these days.
That statement coming from persons of such egregious stupidity as Rebehn and his like-thinkers – the many women and few soppy men who rule Europe these days – is a HUGE compliment to President-elect Donald Trump.
Meanwhile, representatives of Arab community were reported telling the police in Ruhr, “The police will not win a war with us because we are too many.”
Chancellor Merkel, Germany’s ruling elites and the media can continue putting a happy face on uncontrolled mass-migration from Arab and Muslim lands, or suppress news reporting on rising migrant crime, as much as they want, but they cannot wish away the country’s deteriorating law-and-order situation.
As the desperate plea of the police union shows, the Merkel government has decided to ignore the plight of law enforcement, at least for now. It should be evident to even a casual observer that her government still does not care about the victims of its own failed “refugee” policy: Germany appears to be heading toward another rough year.
Indeed – unless enough sanity returns to the German voters for them to get rid of Mad Merkel and put someone in charge who understands why the Trump revolution needs to sweep Europe as therapeutically as it is sweeping America.
The word of the CIA 35
The CIA has concluded in a secret [!?] assessment that Russia intervened in the 2016 election to help Donald Trump win the presidency, rather than just to undermine confidence in the U.S. electoral system, according to officials briefed on the matter.
(Words taken from the Washington Post whose report is to be found here.)
Donald Trump dismissed CIA claims that Russian hacks on Democratic emails were intended to help him win the presidency as “ridiculous”. He told Fox News Sunday that it was “another excuse” for Democrats and said he believed that rival politicians had spread the news. He’s not the only one with doubts – in a secret Capitol meeting last week, a senior FBI official refused to back the CIA’s claim. Russia has been named as the culprit in a number of hacks during the election that saw Democratic emails being leaked. But the FBI says there isn’t enough evidence to confirm Russia was pro-Trump, rather than just causing interference with the election.
(Words taken from the Daily Mail whose report is to be found here.)
The Obama man heading the CIA is John Brennan.
That great resource, Discover the Networks, reveals the following (inter alia) about John Brennan:
In September 2012, Brennan was involved in crafting the false talking points that then-Secretary of State Susan Rice gave regarding the 9/11/12 terrorist attack against a U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya. Specifically, Rice claimed that according to the “best information at present”. the deadly attack was not premeditated, but rather, a “spontaneous reaction” to “a hateful and offensive video that was widely disseminated throughout the Arab and Muslim world.”
On January 7, 2013, President Obama nominated Brennan for the position of CIA director. …
At a May 21, 2013 CIA ceremony honoring the Agency officials killed in the September 11, 2012 terrorist attacks in Benghazi, several CIA officers who had survived those attacks were asked to sign non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) — despite the fact that they were: (a) leaving government service, and (b) still bound by previous NDAs which they had signed. Both before and after the May 21st NDAs, intelligence officials adamantly denied that anyone affiliated with the CIA had been asked to sign nondisclosure agreements regarding the events in Benghazi.
Perhaps the most notable of those denials came in a September 3, 2013 letter from CIA director Brennan to House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence chairman Mike Rogers, in which Brennan responded to several specific questions that Rogers had previously posed (in a letter dated August 2, 2013) regarding whether or not the CIA officers who survived the Benghazi attacks were subsequently subjected to polygraphs or required to sign NDAs. Posing and answering several questions as a means of responding to Rogers’ queries, Brennan wrote:
Has any officer, either staff of contractor, been forced to undergo any polygraph because of their presence or their participation in any activity related to Benghazi attacks? Response: No.
Has any officer, either staff of contractor, been required to sign any non-disclosure agreement because of their presence at Benghazi or their participation in any activity related to the Benghazi attacks? Response: No.
According to sources familiar with the NDAs that were presented to the Benghazi survivors at the May 21, 2013 memorial service, the documents did not specifically mention the Benghazi attacks and thus were technically consistent with Brennan’s letter. But as a Weekly Standard analysis notes:
That’s a generous interpretation. The new NDAs were presented to Benghazi survivors after they had flown in from around the country (or world) to attend a CIA memorial for the Benghazi fallen at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia — where the attacks in Benghazi were the focus of the day. It’s hardly a leap to imagine that these NDAs, perhaps not even necessary, were intended to remind CIA officials a little more than six months removed from their service in Benghazi that the U.S. government would prefer that they not discuss what happened there.
In March 2014, Senator Dianne Feinstein — the head of a Senate Intelligence Committee that was involved in a multi-year probe (begun in 2009) of the CIA’s use of harsh interrogation measures on suspected terrorists during the Bush Administration — went to the Senate floor and angrily accused Brennan’s CIA of having hacked into the computers of her Committee staffers. In response, Brennan expressed dismay that “some members of the Senate” were making “spurious allegations about CIA actions that are wholly unsupported by the facts”. Moreover, he demanded an end to “outbursts that do a disservice to the important relationship that needs to be maintained between intelligence officials and Congressional overseers”. And he told NBC’s Andrea Mitchell:
As far as the allegations of the CIA hacking into Senate computers, nothing could be further from the truth. We wouldn’t do that. I mean, that’s just beyond the, you know, the scope of reason in terms of what we do.” Brennan likewise told the media that “a lot of people who are claiming that there has been this tremendous sort of spying and monitoring and hacking will be proved wrong.
But according to the findings of a CIA inspector general’s report released on July 31, 2014, it was actually Brennan who was proved wrong. The report indicated that five CIA employees — two attorneys and three computer specialists — indeed had surreptitiously and unlawfully searched files and emails on the computers of the aforementioned Senate investigators. In response to the report, Brennan apologized to Senate Intelligence Committee leaders.
Committee members were infuriated, however. Senator Mark Udall (D-Colorado), for example, called for Brennan’s resignation, citing “the unprecedented hacking of congressional staff computers”, damaging leaks about the Committee’s investigations, and Brennan’s “abject failure to acknowledge any wrongdoing by the agency”.
By contrast, White House press secretary Josh Earnest said that President Obama continued to support Brennan and had “not at all” lost faith in the CIA leader’s credibility. …
In a May 2012 teleconference, Brennan revealed some highly sensitive information that, in turn, was relayed to the press by one of the other parties to the call — Richard Clarke, former chief of counter-terrorism in the Clinton White House. This highly serious intelligence leak blew the cover of secrecy off of an active counterterrorism operation in which the British and Saudi intelligence agencies had successfully placed an operative deep inside al Qaeda’s organization in the Arabian Peninsula. Consequently, the initiative had to be terminated immediately, enraging America’s foreign intelligence allies.
… CNN reporter Tal Kopan found a striking admission from CIA Director John Brennan. When he first applied to join the CIA, and received his polygraph test, he was asked this standard question:
Have you ever worked with or for a group that was dedicated to overthrowing the US?
Remarking on this last week during a panel discussion at the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation’s annual conference, Brennan said: “I froze…. This was back in 1980, and I thought back to a previous election where I voted, and I voted for the Communist Party candidate.” Brennan was responding to a question about barriers to recruiting diverse candidates for the intelligence agencies, including whether past records of activism could hurt someone applying for a clearance later in life.
Brennan called his support of the Communist Party a mere “indiscretion”, and reminded his audience that the Constitution grants free speech. He then remembered that he said to himself he could either lie and the polygraph machine would “go wacko” or tell the truth and face the consequences, including possibly being rejected for employment. He told the audience he voted for Gus Hall because while in college he was unhappy “with the system” and saw the “need for change”.
It is relevant to mention that John Brennan probably converted to Islam. (He has not confirmed this.) He is certainly highly protective of Islam.
In a March 2015 speech at the Council on Foreign Relations, Brennan refused to refer to the Islamic State (ISIS, a.k.a. ISIL) terror group as an “Islamic” entity. Said the CIA director: “Quite frankly I am amused at the debate that goes on [that] unless you call it what it is [Islamic terrorism], you don’t know what you’re fighting. And let’s make it very clear that the people who carry out acts of terrorism, whether it be Al Qaeda or the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant [ISIS], are doing it because they believe it is consistent with what their view of Islam is. It is totally inconsistent with what the overwhelming majority of Muslims throughout the world [believe]. And so by ascribing it as a Muslim terrorism or Islamic extremism — I think it does really give them the type of Islamic legitimacy that they are so desperately seeking, but which they don’t deserve at all. They are terrorists, they’re criminals. Many of them are psychopathic thugs, murderers, who use a religious concept and masquerade, mask themselves, in that religious construct. And I do think it does injustice to the tenets of religion when we attach a religious moniker to [ISIS]. The Muslims I know … The people I’ve worked with throughout the Middle East most of my career find just disgraceful that these individuals present themselves as Muslims.”
Considering all this, we would concede that John Brennan’s trustworthiness may be a little higher than Hillary Clinton’s.
And the reliability of reports that come out of John Brennan’s CIA may sometimes rise to the level of Susan Rice’s statements about the Benghazi attack.
Vile bodies 86
This month, December 2016, Amnesty International sponsored a rally in Brussels, where Muslim speakers celebrated the 9/11 attacks, denied the Holocaust, and demonized gays and Jews.
Amnesty International, founded in Britain in 1961 to help political prisoners wherever they may be, became long ago – close on forty years ago by our reckoning – an anti-humanitarian, terrorist-supporting, often communist-led, anti-West institution.
It is quite as bad, though much smaller in size and effect, as the United Nations with its many iniquitous sub-agencies.
Among our posts exposing the extreme turpitude of the UN, and especially of its Human Rights Council (UNHRC), are these: The UN curbs freedom of speech, June 20, 2008; America begs, August 26, 2010; Beyond outrageous, Sept 1, 2010; A contumelious farce, March 2, 2011.
And see the excellent articles by Claudia Rosett, a great authority on the appalling UN.
In September 2015, the Obama administration welcomed the appointment of Saudi Arabia – one of the most oppressive regimes in the world – to head a United Nations Human Rights Council panel.
Why are these monstrous international organizations suffered to exist?
It is a disgrace that the UN – Evil HQ as we call it – stands on American soil. It would fade away if the United States stopped hosting it and providing about a quarter of its revenue.
The UN must be destroyed!
Europe on the brink of change? 133
The bad news today is that Norbert Hofer of the Freedom Party lost his bid for the presidency of Austria. With 92 per cent of the votes counted, the Leftist candidate Alexander Van der Bellen has won 53.3 per cent to Hofer’s 46.7 per cent.
The president of Austria is a figurehead, but the election of Hofer would have been a sign that a majority of Austrians want to stop the flood of Muslim immigrants into their country which European governments, and the undemocratic European Union, have brought upon the continent.
Also today, Italians vote in a referendum. Here there is more hope that the result will shake the European status quo.
The Independent reports:
As Italy hovers on the brink of a referendum result that some experts have suggested could ultimately lead to the destruction of the eurozone, all eyes in Europe are turned towards Rome.
If Italians vote in favour of Prime Minister Matteo Renzi’s proposals to streamline the Italian government and wipe out two-thirds of the senate, it will be a boost for the centre-left politician’s reform agenda.
But if they vote against – and there is every suggestion it will be a close vote – he is expected to resign, which could trigger political instability and bring new turmoil to Italy’s battered banks.
As soon as voting ends and counting begins at 11pm local time, the results of exit polling will be announced.
Half an hour later, the first projections – based on preliminary counting – are set to be broadcast.
If there is a landslide victory for either side, the result could become apparent after the second project, which is expected sometime between between midnight and one in the morning.
Yet if the result is extremely close, the world could have to wait until all the votes are counted, which could be as late as 3am. …
Before the official blackout on polls on 18 November, there was a projected 53.5 per cent to 46.5 per cent lead for the [anti-Renzi] “No” camp”. …
This has been a of year of massive protest votes – in the form of Brexit and Donald Trump’s US Presidential victory.
And the “No” vote is being championed by the populist Five Star movement, led by the comedian Beppe Grillo, an admirer of Mr Trump. …
If new elections are called for early 2017 it’s conceivable that the Five Star movement could come to power.
The party is currently on around 28 per cent in the polls, not far behind Mr Renzi’s Democratic party, which has a 32 per cent share.
An emphatic referendum victory might give Five Star the momentum it needs to get into pole position. …
Five Star has said it would hold a referendum to decide whether Italy should leave the eurozone.
Italy is so large and economically important that many think the single currency itself would break up entirely if its people did vote to depart. …
Eight Italian banks are expected to collapse in the near future if the nation votes “No”.
If the end result is that Italy follows Britain out of the EU, the benefits of the “No” vote succeeding today will be enormous.
*
Update from Breitbart:
Italian PM Matteo Renzi has suffered a heavy defeat in a key referendum on constitutional reform …
The projection by the Piepoli Institute/IPR for state broadcaster RAI estimated 57-61% will vote “No”, compared to 39-43% for “Yes”.
The projection points to an even wider margin of defeat for Mr Renzi than was suggested by three exit polls released immediately after polls closed. …
Opposition parties were quick to call for Mr Renzi to go.
“Renzi is going to go and with him the powerful lobbies who were also defeated”, Renato Brunetta, the parliamentary leader of former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi’s centre-right Forza Italia party.
Matteo Salvini, the head of the Northern League party, said Mr Renzi should quit “in the coming minutes” and called for early elections. …
Spearheaded by the populist Five Star Movement, the biggest rival to Mr Renzi’s Democratic party, the “No” campaign took advantage of the PM’s declining popularity, a struggling economy and problems caused by tens of thousands of migrants arriving from Africa.
The vote is a major victory for Five Star leader Beppe Grillo, who had urged Italians to follow their gut instincts. …
The result is another blow to the European Union, which is struggling to overcome a number of crises and was keen for Mr Renzi to continue his reform drive. …
Some analysts fear a deeper crisis of investor confidence that could derail a rescue scheme for Italy’s most indebted banks, triggering a wider financial crisis across the eurozone.
Islam victorious? 330
It is a common belief among conservatives that the democracies of the West are proof against attack by hostile ideologies; cannot be damaged, let alone destroyed by them, because they can absorb them simply by allowing them free expression. This was true when the threatening ideology was Communism in the last century. Internally, no democracy was mortally harmed by Communist movements. Only formidable (though not supreme) military power, surrendered to by profoundly immoral diplomacy, delivered Eastern European countries freshly liberated from Nazism into the mailed fist of the Soviet Union.
But Communism was not an alien ideology. It was European. It was built on the same foundations that liberal democracy itself had in part been built on – an aspiration to make society fair, kind and good according to definitions inherited from Christianity. Liberal democracy discarded dogmatic orthodoxy, and welcomed secular doubt. But Communism, like Christianity itself, pursued its aspiration with the utmost arrogance, injustice and cruelty.
Now the Western democracies are under attack from a very different enemy: Islam. It shares no moral principles with liberal democracy. Despite claiming to be related to the “moral religions” of Judaism and Christianity, and despite having the word “merciful” in its description of its god, it is not a moral religion. It simply demands total submission to the god’s commandments, as they were issued through the mouth of an illiterate warlord of the 7th century. The commandments are frankly cruel and merciless.
And they are obeyed. Obedient Muslims will offer us Westerners a choice between conversion to Islam, or underdog status bought with tribute, or death. They reject freedom of speech because it allows us to criticize them and their creed. From their point of view, everything that can and must be said about the way human beings should live has been said – by their god through the mouth of his “prophet”. It can only be repeated, never questioned. If you challenge it, if you mock it – you’ll die.
Against such an enemy, our democracies are not proof. We are losing to it. Islam is winning. We are being subjected to Islam.
From Gatestone, by Giulio Meotti:
In the summer of 2005, the Danish artist Kåre Bluitgen, when he met a journalist from the Ritzaus Bureau news agency, said he was unable to find anyone willing to illustrate his book on Mohammed, the prophet of Islam. Three illustrators he contacted, Bluitgen said, were too scared. A few months later, Bluitgen reported that he had found someone willing to illustrate his book, but only on the condition of anonymity.
Like most Danish newspapers, Jyllands-Posten decided to publish an article about Bluitgen’s case. To test the state of freedom of expression, Flemming Rose, Jyllands–Posten’s cultural editor at the time, called twelve cartoonists, and offered them $160 each to draw a caricature of Mohammed. What then happened is a well-known, chilling story.
In the wave of Islamist violence against the cartoons, at least two hundred people were killed. Danish products vanished from shelves in Bahrain, Qatar, Yemen, Oman, the UAE and Lebanon. Masked gunmen stormed the offices of the European Union in Gaza and warned Danes and Norwegians to leave within 48 hours. In the Libyan city of Benghazi, protesters set fire to the Italian consulate. Political Islam understood what was being achieved and raised the stakes; the West did not.
An Islamic fatwa also forever changed Flemming Rose’s life. In an Islamic caricature, his head was put on a pike. The Taliban offered a bounty to anyone who would kill him. Rose’s office at the newspaper was repeatedly evacuated for bomb threats. And Rose’s name and face entered ISIS’s blacklist, along with that of the [subsequently] murdered editor of Charlie Hebdo, Stéphane Charbonnier.
Less known is the “white fatwa” that the journalistic class imposed on Rose. This brave Danish journalist reveals it in a recently published book, De Besatte (The Obsessed). “It is the story of how fear devours souls, friendships and the professional community,” says Rose. The book reveals how his own newspaper forced Rose to surrender.
“The drama and the tragedy is that the only ones to win are the jihadists,” Flemming Rose told the Danish newspaper Weekendavisen.
The CEO of Jyllands–Posten, Jørgen Ejbøl, summoned Rose to his office, and asked, “You have grandchildren, do not you think about them?”
The company that publishes his newspaper, JP/Politikens Hus, said: “It’s not about Rose, but the safety of two thousand employees.”
Jorn Mikkelsen, Rose’s former director, and the newspaper’s business heads, obliged him to sign a nine-point diktat, in which the Danish journalist accepted, among other demands, “not participating in radio and television programs”, “not attending conferences”, “not commenting on religious issues”, “not writing about the Organization of the Islamic Conference” and “not commenting on the cartoons”.
Rose signed this letter of surrender during the harshest time for the newspaper, when, in 2010-2011, there were countless attempts on his life by terrorists, and also attempts on the life of Kurt Westergaard, illustrator of a cartoon (Mohammed with a bomb in his turban) that was burned in public squares across the Arab world. Westergaard was then placed on “indefinite leave” by Jyllands-Posten “for security reasons.”
In his book, Rose also reveals that two articles were censored by his newspaper, along with an outburst from the CEO of the company, Lars Munch: “You have to stop, you’re obsessed, on the fourth floor there are people who ask ‘can’t he stop?'”.
Rose then drew more wrath from his managers when he agreed to participate in a conference with the equally targeted Dutch parliamentarian, Geert Wilders, who at this moment is on trial in the Netherlands for “hate speech”. Rose writes:
He starts yelling at me, “Why the f*ck did you say yes to appear on stage with this terrorist target, are you stupid? Do you have a secret death wish? You have grandchildren now. Are you completely out of your mind? It’s okay if you want to die yourself, but why are you taking the company though all this?”
Jyllands-Posten also pressured Rose when he decided to write a book about the cartoons, Hymne til Friheden (Hymn to Freedom). His editor told him that the newspaper would “curb the harmful effects” of the book by keeping its publication as low-key as possible. Rose was then threatened with dismissal if he did not cancel two debates for the tenth anniversary of the Mohammed cartoons. …
After the 2015 massacre at Charlie Hebdo, Rose, no longer willing to abide by the “diktat” he was ordered to sign, resigned as the head of the foreign desk of Jyllands-Posten, and now works in the US …
Rose writes in the conclusion of his book: “I’m not obsessed with anything. The fanatics are those who want to attack us, and the possessed are my former bosses at Jyllands-Posten.”
Rose’s revelations confirm another familiar story: Jyllands-Posten‘s surrender to fear. Since 2006, each time its editors and publishers were asked if they still would have published the drawings of Mohammed, the answer has always been “no”. This response means that the editors had effectively tasked Rose with writing the newspaper for fanatics and terrorists thousands of kilometers away. Even after the January 7, 2015 massacre at the weekly Charlie Hebdo in Paris, targeted precisely because it had republished the Danish cartoons, Jyllands-Posten announced that, out of fear, it would not republish the cartoons:
We have lived with the fear of a terrorist attack for nine years, and yes, that is the explanation why we do not reprint the cartoons, whether it be our own or Charlie Hebdo’s. We are also aware that we therefore bow to violence and intimidation.
… Is democracy lost? The headquarters of Jyllands-Posten today has a barbed-wire fence two meters high and one kilometer long, a door with double lock (as in banks), and employees can only enter one at a time by typing in a personal code (a measure that did not protect Charlie Hebdo). Meanwhile, the former editor, Carsten Juste, has withdrawn from journalism; Kurt Westergaard lives in hiding in a fortress, and Flemming Rose, like Ayaan Hirsi Ali, fled to the United States.
Much, certainly, looks lost. “We are not living in a ‘free society’ anymore, but in a ‘fear society'”, Rose has said.
Of course, no Western democracy has tried very hard – or at all! – to resist the Islamic onslaught. Governments have invited Muslims into their countries in large numbers. And protected them from criticism.
But that appalling – and inexplicable – state of affairs may be about to change. Perhaps democracy is not lost. Perhaps now that America is about to be led by a man who does not contemplate the possibility of defeat, this most horrible of all possible enemies may be halted, repelled, and discouraged from any renewed attempt at conquest, whether by infiltration or arms, for a very long time.
We hope so.
Indicting Islam 7
“Donald Trump is the most pro-gay presidential candidate in electoral history”, says Milo Yiannopoulos.
And he plainly states that what is to blame for Islamic terrorism is Islam.
Not “Islamism”; not “Islamic fundamentalism”; not “a perversion of Islam”; not “a tiny minority of Muslims”; not people who are driven to extreme actions by insanity, or poverty, or persecution, or President Bush.
Islam.
And so we find this video a pleasure to watch:
Will the stupid and vicious inherit the earth 28
… blessed by the governing elites of Europe and the United Nations?
The supremacist and totalitarian movement called Islam, whose declared intent is world conquest, has become an extremely serious threat.
Its unarmed armies of believers are marching into Europe without encountering the least resistance. Democratically elected European governments have actually invited them in. In Europe they will proliferate, while the indigenous populations shrink, and before long they will be majorities in all western European countries, able to use the democratic process to take over government. Once that has been achieved, there will be no more democracy.
This movement of conquest and total subjugation is passionately encouraged by the UN.
Virginia Hale reports and comments at Breitbart:
The incoming Secretary-General of the United Nations (UN) told a room of policymakers in Europe on Wednesday that “migration is not the problem but the solution”, and said politicians should ignore voters.
Speaking in Lisbon at the Vision Europe Summit, António Guterres said European nations have no right to control their borders and that they must instead take in floods of the world’s poorest people.
“The idea that management of migration is a matter of national sovereignty is extremely limited.”
An idea cannot be “extremely limited”. He means that in his opinion the power of sovereign nations to control who comes into their territory ought to be – not just “extremely limited” but – non-existent.
“The truth is that in the meantime, the real controllers of international mobility are the smugglers and criminal organisations. It must be recognised that migration is inevitable and will not stop,” the socialist told the crowd of policymakers and researchers.
Regarding priorities for the UN, when he takes over from South Korean Ban Ki-moon as Secretary-General, Guterres said he already has “several items to put on the discussion table to drive positive developments” with regards to the goal of making Europe accept more migrants.
This will take place in the form of “develop[ing] legal migration opportunities as the only way to fight against criminal networks”, he hinted.
Guterres insisted that every European Union (EU) nation must be forced to “share the burden” of mass migration.
Despite having used the word “burden” to describe giving residence to large numbers of aliens, the 67-year-old went on to declare: “We must convince [Europeans] that migration is inevitable and that it is the multiethnic societies which are multicultural and multireligious who are building wealth.”
The UN’s next head acknowledged he is “not convinced that it will be easy, given the state of [public] opinion”. Calling for politicians to put “tolerance” and “reason” at the heart of their decision making, Portugal’s former prime minister urged lawmakers to prioritise “values” over respecting voters’ wishes.
He stated: “When elected officials hesitate to choose between values and the next election, I would advise them to choose values. If they go for short term [electoral gain] they will lose both, because there will always come a time when they lose an election At that point, it becomes very hard to recover the values that have been abandoned.” …
What “values” would those be? Just one. And not so much a value as a sentiment. PITY. The sentiment at the heart of Christianity – which ruled half the world with utmost cruelty for a thousand years.
And wherever did he get the idea that where the Muslim hordes have poured into European countries, those countries are “building wealth”? What is actually happening is the exact opposite, as the author points out:
Far from being linked to wealth, data from different European countries support the idea that non-European migrants are a net cost to nations’ treasuries. In the Netherlands, 65 per cent of non-European migrants who arrived during the 1990s are still living on welfare.
And Virginia Hale goes on to quote a professor who dares to say that the Muslim populations which are replacing the indigenous Europeans are mentally inferior. He doesn’t use that term. He calls it “lower intellectual competence”, but the two phrases mean the same thing.
The research of University College London psychology professor Dr. James Thompson shows Europe is being harmed by mass migration from poorer countries, as on average the newcomers’ intellectual competence is much lower than that of natives.
Partly as a result of their culture and partly due to genetics, he notes that the difference in intelligence results in migrants having “lower status, lower wages and higher resentment” at perceived differences.
“On the latter point, if the West cannot bear to mention competence differences, then differences in outcome are seen as being due solely to prejudice,” Thompson warns.
Being made poorer and stupider are two of the ways in which “Europe is being harmed” by the immigration of millions from the mainly Muslim parts of the Third World. The vast increase in crime, especially rape, is not mentioned. Nor the appalling terrorist attacks carried out by the Muslim warriors of jihad.
Enforced conformism, harsh subjugation of women, floggings and amputations and stonings to death, all the horrors of totalitarian enslavement are still to come.
About all of which the incoming Secretary-General of the UN, António Guterres, and the current crop of European leaders such as those of Germany, France, Holland, Sweden, Austria, the EU, are either in denial or unperturbed.
Since America, in its recent elections, rejected the sort of thinking on migration those persons represent, Europeans may be encouraged to use their democratic right, while they still have it, to vote their betrayers out of power.
And after that the Western nations – led, we ardently hope, by President Trump – will destroy the UN.
A stain on humanity 18
… is what the admirably outspoken and truthful Pat Condell tells the Muslim invaders of Europe they are.
Freedom rings 71
These were the closing words of Geert Wilders’s final statement to the court that is trying him for … nothing criminal, nothing immoral. The ruling elite are trying him out of spite, stupidity, pro-Muslim bias, and political correctness.
Mr. President, Members of the Court,
Our ancestors fought for freedom and democracy. They suffered, many gave their lives. We owe our freedoms and the rule of law to these heroes. But the most important freedom, the cornerstone of our democracy, is freedom of speech. The freedom to think what you want and to say what you think.
If we lose that freedom, we lose everything. Then, the Netherlands cease to exist; then the efforts of all those who suffered and fought for us are useless. From the freedom fighters for our independence in the Golden Age to the resistance heroes in World War II. I ask you: Stand in their tradition. Stand for freedom of expression.
By asking for a conviction, the Public Prosecutor, as an accomplice of the established order, as a puppet of the government, asks to silence an opposition politician. And, hence, silence millions of Dutch. I tell you: The problems with Moroccans will not be solved this way, but will only increase.
For people will sooner be silent and say less because they are afraid of being called racist, because they are afraid of being sentenced. If I am convicted, then everyone who says anything about Moroccans will fear to be called a racist.
Mr. President, Members of the Court, I conclude.
A worldwide movement is emerging that puts an end to the politically correct doctrines of the elites and the media that are subordinate to them.
That has been proven by Brexit.
That has been proven by the US elections.
That is about to be proven in Austria and Italy.
That will be proven next year in France, Germany, and The Netherlands.The course of things is about to take a different turn. Citizens no longer tolerate it.
And I tell you, the battle of the elite against the people will be won by the people. Here, too, you will not be able to stop this, but rather accelerate it. We will win, the Dutch people will win, and it will be remembered well who was on the right side of history.
Common sense will prevail over politically correct arrogance. Because everywhere in the West, we are witnessing the same phenomenon.
The voice of freedom cannot be imprisoned; it rings like a bell. Everywhere, ever more people are saying what they think. They do not want to lose their land, they do not want to lose their freedom.
They demand politicians who take them seriously, who listen to them, who speak on their behalf. It is a genuine democratic revolt. The wind of change and renewal blows everywhere. Including here, in the Netherlands.
As I said:
I am standing here on behalf of millions of Dutch citizens.
I do not speak just on behalf of myself.
My voice is the voice of many.And, so, I ask you, not only on behalf of myself, but in the name of all those Dutch citizens:
Acquit me! Acquit us!
Read the whole speech here at Gatestone.