Major pro-Israel giver funds ‘Jihad Watch’ and Wilders' hate-trip to New York

Geller, Wilders, celebrating in LA, 2009

My God, when even the Jerusalem Post is questioning the funding and the motives of the planned 9-11 meeting against the Islamic Center's new premises in Lower Manhattan, why should I refrain then, from mentioning again the scandal of Mr. Geert Wilders' participation in it?

The JP says (September 4) in nits article Major pro-Israel-giver funds ‘Jihad Watch’:

Jihad Watch, the group that is organizing a rally against the planned Islamic center timed for the ninth anniversary of the Sept. 11 2001 attacks, is funded by Freedom Center, a conservative group based in Los Angeles.

An investigative report appearing on the online version of Politico on Saturday says that it has confirmed that the 'lion's share' of the $920,000 funneled through Freedom Center to Jihad Watch over the last three years originated with Joyce Chernick.

The JP mentions a flurry of US Jewish lobbying- and anti-Islamic groups that have been funded by Chernick and the "Freedom Center".

A number of these groups, including the Investigative Project, the ADL and the ZOA, have positioned themselves as opposed to the Islamic center. Other Jewish groups, led by the Reform movement, have been outspoken in supporting the center.

Jihad Watch, founded by Robert Spencer, has in recent months taken on board Pamela Geller, the New York-based blogger who launched efforts to stop the center's building.

Jihad Watch and Wilders claim that Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf would be a "radical" and "being funded" by Islamic fundamentalists.
The funding smear was exposed as utterly ridiculous, when it was revealed that the main Saudi investor in the Center is a major shareholder of hate-mongering Fox News as well. Look at: Amerikaanse Wilders-vrienden schieten in eigen voet! [NL] (comment in Dutch, video in English).

Even if you are a (Sufi!) Muslim who loves your country and its institutions, it seems near to impossible to escape the lies and accusations coming from people like Robert Spencer and Pamela Geller:

Rauf has spoken overseas on behalf of the U.S. State Department, under the Obama and Bush administrations, and has described the United States as a nation whose freedoms benefit Muslims.
He also eulogized Daniel Pearl, the Jewish journalist murdered in 2002 by Pakistani Islamists, by saying that such victims demand a response from Muslims that they, too, are Jews.

But the mere fact that Rauf is a Muslim, is enough for the agitators to depict him as a very dangerous foe of the USA. ("The so-called moderate Muslims are the most dangerous" - Ajaan Hirsi Ali)
We understand very well, that Geert Wilders shares those ideas. They are his daily mantra in Holland and Europe. He is going to say things about President Obama at Ground Zero on 9-11, that even Spencer and Geller do not dare to say. That might be the very reason why they pay with money from innocent Jewish contributors for his flight to New York.
The Jerusalem Post concludes with this remark:

The Islamic center's opponents, led by Jihad Watch, have demanded an accounting of the proposed center's donors, although Rauf has of yet barely raised funds for the center.

And YES: Where does the MONEY come from? It will be somewhat difficult for Geert Wilders to support just this one demand. Wilders himself hides in Holland the sources of the funding of his organization, of which he is the one and only member. A political party organized like a mafia: At least, that would be unthinkable under US Law.

But, alas, our hysterical anti-Islam agitators are not afraid of living in paradoxes and incompatibilities.
For they are not held to account by the men and women we elected to protect our state of law.

Which is at this point of time one of the main roots of European and American troubles.

Wertheim: Modern-day Racism: A Mixture That Calls for Some Clarification | Informed Comment

In front of the tsunami of discrimination and hate-mongering against foreigners and their families, that invades Europe here and now, too few are the voices of intellectuals and scientists, who master the courage to say what they know is the truth: Modern-day hate-mongering is following the same road as recent waves of hate, discrimination, pogroms, ethnic cleansing and mass-extermination rode, just before they burst into collective aggression, war and death. 

In Germany, recently, a team of sociologists, historians and media-experts scrupulously researched the stunning parallels between the genesis of European antisemitism after the emancipation of Jews thanks to the French Revolution during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and modern anti-Islamism. I published an authorized summary of it in HUIBSLOG: Antisemitismus und Islamophobie – Neue Feindbilder, alte Muster [DE] in June 2010. In French (and mostly translated into English), similar studies by Olivier Roy: La sainte ignorance. Le temps de la religion sans culture. (2008).


University Of Michigan Professor (History) Juan Cole publishes a Blog (Informed Comment) since 2002. He is a fine expert of the Muslim world, its history and its diversity. Two of his most recent books are here:

Engaging the Muslim World (2009) sets a possible course for the new Obama administration, doing away with the neocon-inspired Bush "war against evil states".

Napoleon's Egypt: Invading the Middle East (2007) develops a historic parallel between Napoleon's disastrous invasion of Egypt in 1797-99 and the 2003 Bush war against Iraq.

Cole generates a daily stream of posts that deal with the real developments "on the ground" in the Middle East and Asia and intervenes into US debates, learned and less learned, that develop around those issues.

Now and then, Cole publishes a "guest editorial" by another expert. Amsterdam-based retired journalist and writer Anne-Ruth Wertheim develops her father²)'s analysis of the different types of racism here, inspired by the rise of Mr. Wilders' political career, based on discrimination and hate-mongering. Wilders' ideas are racist, in her view. She explains, what mixture of racisme we have to to do with, here.

²) (Prof. Wertheim, Amsterdam University, one of my teachers there during the Sixties)

Ruth Wertheim is announced as follows at Informed Comment (IC):

Anne-Ruth Wertheim is a journalist and the author of various books including De gans eet het brood van de eenden op, mijn kindertijd in een Jappenkamp op Java (The Goose Snatches the Bread from the Ducks, My Childhood in a Japanese Prison Camp on Java, 1994). An Indonesian translation of the book was published in March 2008.She works with the concepts of exploitation/colonial racism (contempt or condescension) and cultural/competition racism (envy and distrust).

Wertheim: Modern-day Racism: A Mixture That Calls for Some Clarification | Informed Comment:
Posted on August 30, 2010

Anne-Ruth Wertheim writes a guest editorial for Informed Comment:

Propagators of modern-day racism, which is often called Islamophobia in an effort to take off the edge, claim that all they are doing is warning people about what they see as the danger of Islam, and that it has nothing to do with racism. But it is a misconception to think that racism only pertains to the physical features people are born with. Throughout history, cultural characteristics that people develop in the course of their lives have also been grounds for maligning and excluding certain groups. The competition racism that mercantile minorities all across the globe have been, and still are, confronted with, as well as the anti-Semitism in pre-WWII Europe, were imbued with cultural prejudices, and never failed to include the item of religion.

Nonetheless it is understandable that people feel confused. Modern-day racism is a mixture of two types of racism, exploitation or colonial racism and cultural or competition racism. Thus, while focusing primarily on a cultural aspect of the group, such as Islam, their religion, there still exists a focus on the group’s physical features. I will try to explain this in my article.

I was born in Indonesia when it was still a Dutch colony. I lived in a beautiful house with my parents and my little brother and sister. Like any child, I looked at the world as something that was just there. There were always Indonesian servants around who were quick to pick up anything I dropped. They would take my dirty clothes and give them back clean and neatly ironed. At breakfast every morning, my mother would sit at the table and talk to Kokki about what she would cook that day, Kokki squatting on the ground as they spoke. And when I was allowed to go along shopping, I would see Chinese proprietors bossing around Indonesians who swept the floors.

My view of the world consisted of three layers, with us white Dutchmen on top, the Indonesians at the bottom, and the Chinese in between.

From one day to the next my view of the world turned upside down when I was seven. World War II was raging in the Pacific and the Japanese occupied the Dutch East Indies. They set up a cruel regime that was to last for three and a half years and sent us and everyone else who was white to internment camps. We hardly had anything to eat, not much of anything else either, and were kept in line with a show of physical force. Our camp was guarded by Indonesian soldiers who were beaten just as hard by the Japanese as we were, though they were fed a lot better.

Now the Japanese were on top and we were at the bottom with the Indonesians in between.

Halfway through the war, the Japanese, who were allies of Nazi Germany, started to follow its example and separate Jews from non-Jews. My father, who was at an internment camp for men, was Jewish, but my mother, who was with me and my brother and sister at the women’s camp, was not. So we three children were half-Jewish and the Japanese threatened to separate us by force from our mother. To keep that from happening, my mother decided to register as Jewish herself and all four of us went to the Jewish camp together.*

After the war our family returned to the Netherlands and I discovered that my father’s Jewish family had been almost entirely killed and my Jewish grandparents had committed suicide the day the Dutch capitulated to the German army.

Shortly before and during the war, both of my parents were gradually convinced of the legitimacy of the Indonesian people’s struggle for independence. As outsiders among other Dutch people, who still felt and thought in a very colonial way, our family had to endure a lot of aggression, which of course had great impact on me as a high school student.

So by that time I had experienced quite a bit of racism and violence and all kinds of images were tangled up in my mind. It was not until much later that I started to untangle the chaos of images. One of the people I learned from was my father, a sociologist of Southeast Asia, W. F. Wertheim. He drew a distinction between two types of racism:

1. Exploitation or colonial racism towards colonized peoples and blacks during slavery and Apartheid. They were considered stupid and lazy and unable to govern themselves, but good enough to do the heavy labour for the ruling white minority.

2. Competition or cultural racism towards mercantile minorities all across the globe who compete with the established majorities. The Chinese in Indonesia and Jews in pre-WWII Europe were considered sly and cunning and accused of wanting to rule the world.

Continuing in my father’s footsteps, I discovered a shift here in Europe and thus also in the Netherlands. The first guest workers from Turkey and Morocco were confronted with the familiar old-style colonial racism and they were looked down upon. As is witnessed by the numerous references in modern-day racism to the alleged inabilities of immigrants, this tendency to look down on these people is still very much in evidence. But now that their children and grandchildren are better able to compete, the racism is starting to exhibit more elements of competition racism and to focus more on their cultural features. It is turning against Muslims and in essence all non-Western immigrants.

So, at the moment, a shift can be observed from the colonial, exploitation type of racism that focuses on physical features to the cultural type of racism that focuses on cultural features such as religion. Being somewhere in the middle of this shift we now have to do with a mixture which combines elements from both types of racism.

This modern-day mixture is nicely illustrated by the language the extreme right-wing Dutch politician Geert Wilders uses, slyly intertwining looking down on people with inspiring fear of them.**

In this chart I show exactly where the differences lie between the two types of racism. To start with, they apply to totally different groups. This is directly linked to the kind of work they do and their economic position. In this connection, there is also a difference in the prejudices that are put into circulation. In colonial racism, the prejudices have to do with contempt and disdain and focus mainly on physical features, and in cultural racism they evoke fear and mainly focus on cultural features. The intentions behind the prejudices are completely in line with what they are supposed to justify, in one case exploitation, in the other exclusion.

When I write and talk about these two types of racism, something that always strikes me is how much more familiar the exploitation type of racism is to people than the competition type. Racism that pertains to groups that are forced to do the heavy work and are considered to be stupid and lazy, is widely known, and the human damage caused by colonial and post-colonial procedures is recognized manifold. But the other type of racism that pertains groups that are competitive and for that reason accused of being dangerous and striving for total domination, is amazingly unknown. Nevertheless this last type has also caused and still causes much damage in the world – ranging from pogroms on Chinese mercantile minorities everywhere in Asia, to the expulsion of the Indian- and Pakistani mercantile minority from Uganda, to what happened to the Jews in Europe.

It is also interesting to see what makes people believe in prejudices that they nonetheless prefer to keep to themselves. No one is about to admit how much they like feeling superior to another group. And in our competition-ridden society, envy and jealousy are frowned upon; anyone who has less than someone else has only himself to blame. This capitalistic ideology was aptly stated recently by Dutch right-wing politician Mark Rutte when he sardonically referred to a higher tax for the rich as jealousy tax. So it is no wonder people would rather not admit their envy towards the competitiveness of immigrants and prefer to be carried away by cheerleaders for the fear of Islam.

Lastly, the violence – be it extremely diverse – that accompanies each type of racism. In the case of exploitation racism, only a few rebellious individuals are publicly punished to keep everyone else in their place. The group as a whole, after all, has to remain healthy enough to do the hard work. But the intention of cultural racism is to exterminate an entire group or expel them from the country. History has shown that this kind of mass violence is set in motion once the epithets that really scare people have been uttered long and systematically enough about a specific group. It is not without reason that people who commit these acts of violence so often say that they had no choice, that it was self-defence. And in every case, the outbreak of violence was preceded by a sharper outlining of the group, accompanied by allusions to expulsion, and a stronger emphasis on recognizing members of the group.

With their seemingly purely economic question about the costs of all the non-Western immigrants and their children and their children’s children, the propagators of modern-day racism in the Netherlands recently put a group in the spotlight that everyone can recognize by the colour of their skin. This is going to mean trouble. But there is still time. Time for more and more people to understand the mechanisms that are in motion and opt for a future of peaceful coexistence.

* I tell this story in The Goose Snatches the Bread from the Ducks. My Childhood in a Japanese Prison Camp on the Isle of Java, which can be ordered on DVD or downloaded via this site.

** See This Link to my earlier essay at IC (Wilders' Lethal Words)
----------------------
Anne-Ruth Wertheim beloofde me vandaag een Nederlandse vertaling, die onmiddellijk zal worden opgenomen.
(Update 1/9/10:  NL versie is gepubliceerd in Huibslog: Anne-Ruth Wertheim: Hedendaags racisme, een mengvorm die verheldering verlangt [NL] en in De Lage Landen, plus Krapuul: Nuttig essay van Anne-Ruth Wertheim: Wilders’ koloniaal- en concurrentie-racisme)
Eerdere versies van bovenstaand artikel van Ruth Wertheim verschenen op Republiek Allochtonië en Weblog Anja Meulenbelt.

Worst imaginable scenario in Holland: The right negotiates an anti-social minority government , dependent on Wilders' votes

SP party cartoon: Wilders calls the shots...

I have been wrong. Wilders' one-man PVV "party", a mafioso construction controlling 24 out of 150 parliamentarians in the Dutch administrative capital The Hague is not excluded, no, it it calling the shots, for the moment.

Election-winner VVD (conservatives, 31/150) and election-loser CDA (Christian-Democrats, 21/150) agreed with the false-blond populist (PVV, 24/150) on August 9, 2010, to negotiate a coalition government program, to be implemented by a VVD-CDA team of Ministers, with the support of Wilders' acolytes, who will not participate personally in that Government. If nobody from the participating parties disagrees, that would provide a tiny second-chamber majority of 76/150, but a minority in the first chamber, the senate, where it would master a minority of 35/75.

The right is hoping for a landslide at the regional (provincial) elections in March, 2011, for the provincial parliaments who nominate the senate members.

The VVD and CDA agree on a 18 billion euro spending-cut program, without compensation by way of charging the wealthy and the banks who provoked the recent financial crisis. Wilders, who had himself elected on promises of no-cuts on pensions and welfare, agrees however, in so far as his program of apartheid and discrimination of immigrants, as well as his security proposals are honored by the two other parties.

What we see, is a devilish scenario. Wilders remains free, to develop his provocations and to terminate his collaboration with the Right at any moment that suits him. The Dutch welfare state is deconstructed by the thatcherite conservative VVD, while the CDA, I presume, will limit itself to protecting the corporatist structures it planted in Dutch society from the Fifties onwards.

Wilders already gave in on the retirement pension issue. Although he declared, before elections, that maintaining the retirement age at 65 years, was a "breaking point" for him and the PVV, three hours after closure of the ballot boxes in June, he said on television, that he was ready to accept a 67 year limit.

In an artistic move, Wilders created a national and international discussion about the pros and cons of his appearance at the SIOA meeting in New York on September 11 against the Park 51 inter-religious centre, where an Islamic worship room is planned. The public debate shifted as planned, from the barbarous cuts to "freedom of speech" with the US ultra-right.

We got a preview of the way in which an eventual minority rightist government will deal with that kind of provocations, as CDA-leader and acting foreign minister Verhagen timidly asked Mr. Wilders "to please consider the consequences of his deeds" for the international position of the Netherlands and its business interests.

Meanwhile, the not-right political side, kept quiet. Intimidated by Wilders' rhetoric and inapt to mobilize the majority of Dutch citizens who are staunchly against apartheid and discrimination on their doorsteps, they are waiting for a miraculous end to the Fortuyn-Wilders nightmare, hiding away in silence and hoping that somebody else than themselves, will take upon them the dirty task to tell the bare truth about Wilders' gliding to (neo-)fascism.

Yesterday, a relatively minor social-democrat eminence, senate-member Frans Leijnse, also professor at the respected Leyden University, finally crossed the border of silence and wrote an article for a nationwide daily, demonstrating that Wilders' party, the PVV, is to be considered as neo-fascist.

Too little, too late. The hate-poison has spread itself to wide proportions of the public. About Islam, anything goes, actually. People feel themselves abandoned, left alone. Lone rider Wilders has their sympathy. Attacking Wilders equals high treason.

The only solution, I see, is a grassroots campaign in the twelve Dutch regions (provinces) that shows how patient and democratic action creates a better life for all inhabitants of f.i. an urban neighborhood, without discrimination of newcomers. That shows, that the acolytes of Geert Wilders are empty-headed and supremacist. That makes clear, that the democratic left is not your enemy, but your ally.

Such a campaign will have to deal with the outrageous accusations from Wilders and his far-right Israeli and US allies, that the Left is part of a world-wide conspiracy that allies itself with Islamists in order to stay in power. Likewise, it will have to deal with religious fanatics, who reject any accommodation with western society. But why wouldn't it be feasible? It must be the right way to deal with 21st century problems. Common sense will accept credibility of peaceful social solutions. The democratic Left should take their own destiny in their hands and go forward.

There is no way back.
Anymore.

Urban Legends abour Muslims are a Disaster for the Dutch international Standing (1)

How the Dutch extreme-right wing exploitation of islamophobia is really bad for The Netherlands' international reputation...

Today, three examples of the international echo in English of the actual Dutch obsession with urban legends about Muslims.

1. The US Loonwatch site about Tariq Ramadan.
Ramadan, a Geneva-based Islamic scholar, was engaged by Rotterdam city to teach 'Integration' at the Rotterdam University and to advise the Rotterdam City about how to deal with its immigrants from Islamic countries. Ramadan was controversial at the time of this engagement. The US had banned his entry into the States (2005).

Four years it took the successors of Pim Fortuyn (still an important party in the local council), to find finally a "stick to beat the dog". Tariq Ramadan commented on an Iranian website on Israel. What he said, was not in the least belligerent or out of place. No, the FACT that Ramadan co-operated with an Iranian programme was sufficient. He was sent away by both the local authority and the University.

Tariq Ramadan is a theoretician. Not a civil servant. His family may have ties with the original Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, which was an Arabic intellectual movement for modernization of the Islam. The actual fundamentalist Muslim Brothers are in favor of the contrary: Back to the Roots! They are not in favor of Saudi Wahhabism, but (too) often, they link up with it.

The original Muslim Brotherhood took its inspiration from the Enlightenment. The founders were in narrow contact with the European Freemasons. I.e. the people who helped Christianism to become rational and who invented the Separation of State and Religion. Just like the Founders of the United States of America, when they signed the Declaration of Independence.

That is, what I hear, when I listen to Tariq Ramadan. And that is, what I think, should be the message, our Muslim immigrants will have to understand. You can preserve the whole richness of your religion and culture, provided, you become a decent citizen (if you aren't already) of the Western society that is receiving you in its midst.
It can be argued, that Ramadan's message is too intellectual, too abstract, for Moroccan (Berber) farmers from the Rif region, who constitute the bulk of Rotterdam city's Muslim immigrants. That is not Tariq's fault. For their way of thinking and perceiving, there exist other strategies, that may help to calm the problematic relations with the other cultures that are to be found in the City of Rotterdam. The mayor and his aldermen should have thought about that, five years ago.

Like Ajaan Hirsi Ali, ironically, Tariq Ramadan was ousted by the Dutch, to find a refuge in ... the US. While Ajaan was (during the Bush reign) welcomed by the Neocons of the American Enterprise Institute, Ramadan is going to teach at a Catholic University in the Midwest.

The New York Times, today, has an article about President Obama's tranquil way, to engage American Muslims, after their marginalization and the mistrust they are exposed to, due to the Bush demagogy. Engaging Ramadan, is part of it.

It is a shame to the Dutch, that their country, formerly known as a refuge for original thinkers like Spinoza, Descartes, etc., is sending them away now, tarnishing their reputation.

Like Dutch entrepreneurs and tycoons said before (and who are we, to contradict them on this point?): Mr. Wilders and his supporters are doing a big disfavor to the country.
The country they say they love so much more than us, the "cultural relativists" who continue to open up to new and old contributions to our society.

Here is the first one we'd like to show to you:

Posted at loonwatch.com on 16 April 2010: "Tariq Ramadan, “stealth jihadist,” exposed!"

Tariq Ramadan

As you know, Dr. Tariq Ramadan - Muslim scholar, writer, and thinker - has had his visa to enter the country reinstated, and he used this to his advantage: speaking at various engagements across the United States. We here at LoonWatch alerted our fellow citizens of the arrival of the “stealth jihadist,” coining the terminology of Robert Spencer. Yet, we didn’t want to stop just there. We wanted to report on what this man was saying."

Loonwatch.com had a stealth observer at Tariq Ramadan's Chicago annual banquet speech for CAIR.
The man reported that Ramadan concluded his speech with the following dangerous incitement:

His final words were this: Never forget that you Muslims are American. He urged them to speak about Iraq, Afghanistan, and Palestine, and do so as Americans, not Muslims. Moreover, Muslims need to institutionalize their presence in America: Muslims need institutions, and they must work with all people. The key is confidence and humility: be confident about your position, but be humble at the same time.

Part 2 and 3 will feature the urban legends that are rocking Holland and Wilders' stealthy way of associating with racist persons and websites.

L.A., May 1st: Spencer and Geller Celebrate St. Geert Wilders, a Loony Prophet from Holland

Pamela Geller* (Atlas Shrugs) and Robert Spencer ** (Jihad Watch), are not the kind of people, Geert Wilders likes to show himself off with. In Europe, that is.
On May 1st, in Los Angeles, he will do, what he avoids doing in Europe: Associate openly with 100% racist loonies, suprematists and war-mongerers.



(Wilders and Pamela, Spencer, Los Angeles, May 2009)

Again. For Wilders' outrageous and hollow hate-speech (I have no time to give you a link) against Muslims, Obama and Liberals in May last year in the same LA, has left his US adorators longing for more. They have produced a one-hour long movie "Islam Rising", featuring Geert Wilders as "the Winston Churchill Of Our Times (Pamela)".
In Europe, Wilders is accepting and cashing passively support, money, adoration, celebration and flattery from nazist, revanchist, ultra-zionist and racist personalities and groups, like

1. the Vlaams Belang (former Dutch-speaking Nazi-associates in Belgium, getting about 20% of the vote in their region),
2. the French Front National of Mr. Le Pen (ultra-nationalist, anti-arabian revanchists, 17% at the last French elections),
3. British and Danish white suprematist groups like SIEO,as well as rightist anti-European movements like UKIP in Britain and a similar party in Denmark,
4. German Nazi-Nostalgics from the NPD, but also "modern" German, Swiss and Austrian racists, who say that they are inspired by the actual Israeli politics, such as the "Politically Incorrect" hate blog and others.

But Wilders NEVER acknowledges their support and, at the same time, NEVER explicitly dissociates himself from those (hidden) anti-semites, either.
He thinks that he can get away with Likud and Israel Beteinu support, for the Dutch feel guilty about the huge number of Jews, carried away 1940-45 from Holland to Auschwitz with the active and passive help from many among them, and they will not dare to discuss Holocaust.
He also thinks, that he can get away with Daniel Pipes, whom he invited as an "expert" to his Dutch hate-mongering trial. In fact, I think, that Wilders is completely dependent on Israeli-US financing of his agitation. That is why, for instance, he announced his solidarity with an ethnic cleansing of Palestinians (muslim AND christian) from Palestine, NOT in Dutch Parliament, but in Copenhague, so as to satisfy his Israeli-American sponsorers, without provoking an upsurge among the Dutch, who oppose of course nearly all such an outrage.

 Enjoy (above) the trailer of the Spencer-Geller movie celebrating the clown Wilders!

*) Pamela Geller, the looniest blogger ever, her site and her evaluation at Loonwatch.com
**) Robert Spencer, his site and his evaluation at Loonwatch.com
-----
Please, join us at the LA information campaign, against anti-semitism, against anti-muslimism and against anti-Holland agitation, at a meeting on May 1st in Los Angeles, time and location to be announced soon!

Wilders' Money to remain hidden to you and me, but open to CIA?

The European Parliament will have to decide, this week, if it allows American authorities to data-mine your and mine international euro-transfers by way of copying the SWIFT data.
Swift services banks in Europe and elsewhere. For instance, when I send some of my Dutch retirement money to my Belgian account, the ING bank warns me, that this may be monitored by American authorities.
I have no problem with that. If the CIA wants to know, that I live in Brussels and that I buy my shrimps there at Delhaize, good riddance, OK with me.
But the EP has a point, when it says, that American authorities have to have a reason, when they ask for Swift data. Any European nation allows prosecution to scrutinize my financial data, or listen to my private communications, only, when there is a probable link to crime or terrorism. If there is no one, I can trust my bank, that it protects my privacy.
So, why does the CIA not trust my national European secret services?
That is a long, difficult and complicated story.
I will tell you another time. For a considerable part, they may be right. For who believes, for instance, our Italian secret service Mafiosos?
So, please, CIA, NSA, search for bank transfers linked to Al-Qaeda! I couldn't agree more.
And, do not forget to tell us about Mr. Wilders, from Holland, who gets millions of dollars from US accounts for destabilization of European nations.
Pardon me, if I watch the Dutch representatives from he PVV "party" in the EP.
What are they up to?
Will they vote for a going Dutch alone, as their program states? Or will they vote for transparency to the CIA, while Dutch public opinion remains left in the dark?
Hey, Mr. Wilders, your credibility is at stake!

London must allow Wilders' racist Agitation?

February 2009, British Government did the right thing. They did not allow Geert Wilders to come on British soil in order to spread his venomous ideas under the umbrella of the anti-European UKIP party.

Blocking an elected representative from a befriended country is indeed exceptional. But in my view, British Government set an example of integrity, ashaming Dutch Parliament, that allows a no-membership "party" to agitate on racial issues. Most parties in Holland, exception made for the left liberal D66 group as well as for the "Green-Left", are stuck like rabbits in the headlights of a Mercedes, not knowing what to do about this utterly un-Dutch Wilders movement.

Wilders is jubilating

The London Immigration Court, in condemning yesterday the UK Government decision concerning Wilders' dangerous upsetting of public order, put itself on the accommodating Chamberlain (1938) line. I hope that the UK Government will oppose that decision and continue in a more Churchillian line, blocking continental follies and preserving democracy and humanism in Europe as a whole.

But, for the moment, Wilders is jubilating. "Esther", editor of "Islam in Europe", gives Wilders full steam, in citing The Guardian:

The far-right Dutch politician Geert Wilders intends to travel to London next week after an immigration tribunal ruling overturned a ban on visiting Britain.

The Home Office said it was disappointed after the tribunal rejected its claim that his presence could "inflame community tensions and lead to inter-faith violence".

The Freedom party leader immediately announced his intention to meet Ukip's Lord Pearson of Rannoch to discuss a showing of his anti-Islamic film Fitna later this month in the House of Lords.

Judge CMG Ockelton, who chaired the tribunal, said that Wilders's opinions were expressed strongly and in a way that was bound to cause offence but that the right of freedom of expression was important in a democratic society.

"Substantial evidence of actual harm would be needed before it would be proper for a government to prevent the expression and discussion of matters that might form the opinions of legislators, policy makers and voters," he said.

The ruling said there had been no evidence of public order problems or damage to community relations as a result of a previous visit by Wilders to Britain.

"It was more important to allow free speech than to take restrictive action speculatively," said Ockelton.

The judgment goes further, saying that even if there were evidence that Wilders posed a threat to public order it would still not have been necessary to ban him because the police would have been able to ensure no disorder took place and remove him if there was trouble.

The decision to ban Wilders was taken under regulations introduced in 2006 which allow the exclusion of those who represent "a genuine, present and sufficiently serious threat affecting one of the fundamental interests of society".

Wilders, who faces trial in the Netherlands for discrimination and inciting hatred, was turned back at Heathrow in February when the then home secretary, Jacqui Smith, banned him from entering Britain. He had been coming for a screening in the Lords of his film which calls the Qur'an a "fascist book". Smith said his presence had the potential to "threaten community harmony and therefore public safety".

Wilders said the ruling was a victory for freedom of expression and claimed Smith's decision had been politically motivated.

The politician was represented in the case by a British Muslim barrister, Arfan Khan, and the costs of just under £10,000 were funded by the Birkenhead Society, which "encourages free speech" and marks British Empire Memorial Day.

The Home Office said it would decide whether to appeal in due course.

The problem is Dutch, and, more specifically, political, not juridical

The weak and accommodating stand of the Dutch parliamentarian majority does not help at all. In January 2010 an Amsterdam high court, on its own initiative, will decide, if Wilders' actions are "hate-mongering" or not. This is a task, Parliament itself should have undertaken. The Social-Democrats, labeled by Wilders as "Sharia-Socialists", should have taken him to court immediately. For Wilders stated unambiguously in his "Fitna" movie, that in his view, the Sharia is fascist.

But no mainstream political party in Holland dares to move. With the Christian Democrat main Government Party it is still worse: It keeps open the possibility of governing with the undemocratic Wilders club.

The debilitating consequences of letting an odd maverick steal the elections

Wilders participated in the June European elections. Only to send a delegation to Strasbourg and Brussels, that has no mission at all. He stole a third of the Dutch representation in the EP, weakening the impact of his country on crucial European issues, crucial for the Netherlands, too, only to cash the money that he cannot have from membership fees, as his "party" has no members except himself.

Like all developed EU-members, Holland should make democratic rules for the internal organization and the financing of parties allowed to participate in the vote. Minister of the Interior Guusje Ter Horst has done nothing, so far. Wilders is getting money from neo conservative sources in the US. He could upset the whole European process, like the Irish tycoon Decan X did last year, provoking an Irish "No" to the Lisbon Treaty. I am sad at the idea, that Holland could be mobilized against the European construction, like Chechia, Poland, and other American-sponsored entities are.

To conclude: Of Course, the final solution of the Dutch identity crisis is not with a London Court. Dutch democratic, anti-authoritarian, traditions should be mobilized against the populist danger.

But, who dares to face the challenge in the Low Countries?

Copenhague: Dutch parliamentarian Geert Wilders reveals himself as an ethnic cleanser...

Dutch parliamentarian Geert Wilders was interviewed in Danish television last Sunday.

What he says, boils down to a call for an ethnic cleansing of Europe. Listen to his statements here:

In short: There are too many people from Muslim descent in Europe and they have more children than others. Muslims have been contaminated with "a criminal ideology" (Islam). That is why there are so many criminals among them. They have to be sent away immediately. But that is not enough: Anybody who starts "thinking about Sharia and Jihad" or "Caliphate" should be deported too.

"Muslims want to take over our culture" and "change it fundamentally". That is why we have to start deportations to the countries of origin (of their parents).

Like every ethnic cleanser, Wilders adopts a salami tactic: First isolate a part of the ethnic group and earmark them (and their families) for harsher treatment than foreseen in the Law. And in the Denmark interview, Wilders is already targeting a second, larger category: "those who THINK about jihad and sharia". For Muslims, there is not only no freedom of expression any more, but even no more freedom of thinking. Logical conclusion: As you cannot know what a person thinks, every Muslim (or person from Muslim descent) is a potential danger. That is why he is ranting about "tens of millions" of people to be deported from Europe.

Wilders is no more your daily oddball. He has a large constituency in Holland. And more and more admirers in the US, in Israel and in European countries. He has to be taken seriously. Like we should have done, for instance, with that oddball poet Karadzic around the year 1990, when he prepared the ethnic cleansing and mass murder of non-serbian Bosniaks.

The UN The Hague Inernational Court is at this very moment constructing its case against Karadzic, digging into his agitation from before the Yugoslav Civil War.

If we prefer to avoid ethnic cleansing operations in the future, it is there, in the new International Court, where Wilders belongs.

Who has the guts to indict him?

Ms. Verdonk accused of theft

Ed Sinke, the former Rotterdam agent of Ms. Rita Verdonk, former Dutch Minister of Immigration, has informed Dutch Justice of possible inappropriate appropriation of funds by his former employer.
Rita Verdonk tried to get 4.000 Euros still in the political account of her movement, but that are not her propriety.
Poor Rita is in dire straights.
But rules are rules.
She should know.
Bye, Rita, you were lovely.
Another racist gone down.
She rests in peace.

Akte Islam bans Fjordman as a "CIA-agent" and finds refuge with local Islam-bashers

Akte Islam Fjordman
Originally uploaded by huibriethof

This statement comes from "Akte Islam", November 2007. The German 'Pax-Europa' movement, founded by Secret-Services freak Dr. Udo Ulfkotte in 2006 in order to promote European values, like tolerance, Enlightenent and judeo-christian heritage, limits it's action to vulgar Muslim-bashing.

After the flopping of a pan-European anti-Eurabia manifestation on September 11 in Brussels, with Danish-English SIOE and the Vlaams Belang, Ulfkotte bans right-wing extremists and CIA-inspired people like Spencer and Bat Ye'or and their stooges (notably the so-called 'Fjordman') from collaborating with his ailing Pax Europa movement.

Yesterday, Ulfkotte fusioned his Pax Europa club with the German 'Association of Citizen Movements', in order to get "observer status" with the EU, the European Council and, as if that weren't enough, with the UN too.

We wish the new couple a happy honeymoon and we are eagerly expecting the inevitable clash between President Ulfkotte and CEO Schwend.
Technorati Tags: Germany, Ulfkotte, Europe, Islam

Will Ulfkotte succeed in strangling freedom of expression on the Web?

I read a nearly desperate call of one of the bloggers who are persecuted in Germany by Udo Ulfkotte.

The self-appointed Saviour of Europe (from Islam) wastes his time and money on legal quibbling against at least three German bloggers we know of, demanding huge amounts of money as compensation for alleged calumny.

As always, he uses "Pax Europa" as his vehicle to bear the brunt of his expenditure on legal fees and lawyers, as well as the risk of his finally going out empty-handed. (Like in his legal actions against Belgian authorities who forbade the Brussels 9/11 demonstration).

Ulfkotte's legal tactics have for consequence that individual antiracist bloggers are now in danger of being blooded to a financial death by legal invoices (from lawyers as well as from Ulfkotte and his Pax Europa Organization).

It is a cause of principle: Freedom of opinion, freedom of linking to other people's opinions. The Internet is something different from traditional media. It is interactive. People who feel the need to contradict something, can react, either on the site of their "detractor", or on their own site, and link it to the original post.

On the Net, it is no more like in the traditional printed-paper world. Legal provisions to protect individuals and institutions from slandering in the press, have historically been instituted to limit the abuse by mass media of their near-monopoly of the public sphere. This was done to correct a situation of unequal power, unequal access to the public tribune.

The Net, however, is much more democratic: Anybody can publish, react, link, with about equal opportunity to reach the public and the public opinion. Therefore, everybody can, within the limits of the law, more freely vent his or her opinions and participate in the many dialogues that ensue. This is a fundamentally different situation from the one, the old press laws have been made in.

Does this open the way to a so-called "liberty to offend", as claimed by many ideological allies of Dr. Ulfkotte? (Viz. the danish Cartoons debate!). We do not think so. Bloggers should take up their responsibility for consequences that their words and drawings may provoke.

But nobody can upheld, that opening a discussion about racism, or hidden racism, in Dr. Ulfkotte's recent statements and actions, is irresponsible or provocative in the way, the Danish cartoons and similar systematic slandering of other people's deepest convictions are.

But Ulfkotte, undermining the opinions of his allies, also in this matter, goes for exactly the contrary of "freedom to offend". He goes for Internet Censure by the Courts.

The German Courts work with existing laws. Laws that date essentially from the printed-paper area. Laws that in the matter of press rules, have been sharpened after 1945, in order to avoid the kind of abuse, the Nazis made of the media. These laws need urgently an update for the 21st century. The actual legal situation allows anybody who has the financial means for it, to legally strangle other, less wealthy, bloggers, and to bleed them financially white with court fees and amends.

Ulfkotte has started to exploit this loophole in German jurisdiction. He sues other bloggers for "Verleumdung" (defamation), when they call him a "racist". Even if they only link to an article where such things are written!

Even if Udo Ulfkotte does not agree, and invokes "demographic" reasons for his islam-bashing, the opinion, that Ulfkotte's ramblings are of a racist nature, can be perfectly sustained:

In other countries, where legislation is not narrowed by post-1945 fears of nazist revival, an authority on Islam-Western relations like Olivier Roy, has been able to freely characterise as "racist" a maverick French philosopher (Robert Redeker), who wrote a perfectly "ulfkottean" article in the Paris daily 'Le Figaro'. (Olivier Roy in 'Esprit', November 2006 [FR]). That is why Germany urgently should modernize its legislation on the protection of personal integrity in the media, especially ont the internet. And that is why, if the German Courts would follow Ulfkotte's injunctions, an appeal to the European Court of Justice could well turn into a final victory for the attacked bloggers.

That Ulfkotte abuses of these provisions that were originally intended to guard against new Nazism, in order to silence his critics from the antiracist left, is is proven by the fact, that he doesn't undertake anything against those who defame him from the right. (Examples in At Home in Europe, october 3, 2007). Such a behaviour has never been the intention of the legislators! German parliament and Courts should urgently undertake steps to correct the old provisions in order to make them applicable to the internet-epoch.

Those, who stand up so vehemently for "the freedom to offend" (vide Danish Mohammed Cartoons debate, as well as Ajaan Hirsi Ali's statements to that effect), should also take action here against Ulfkotte and his organization. Freedom is indivisible. If Ulfkotte's anti-Islamist allies let him have his way against anti-racist bloggers, their turn will come next.
Ulfkotte's former "SIOE"-allies from Denmark and Britain are already aware of the possibility that Ulfkotte may do his disorganizing and destabilizing work at the service of unknown secret services! (At Home in Europe, September 13)

So, the only thing that is left to do next, is to organise a public action of bloggers (from left and right) to make Ulfkotte and Pax Europa stop their legal advocacy against freedom of expression on the Net. On the 15th of November, in Frankfurt, a provisional hearing by the Court will decide about the procedure to follow.

Time is short. An appeal to the European Court should be envisaged, if German judges choose to follow Dr. Ulfkotte and his Pax Europa Verein.

It is important, that German judges and legislators be aware of what is at stake, before the Frankfurt Court holds its preliminary hearings on November 15 in the first two cases of Ulfkotte advocacy against freedom of expression on the Web!

Europe's right-wing extremists show us, how to discuss differences of opinion

Europe's right-wing extremists show us, how to discuss differences of opinion in a way, compatible with European judeo-christian values. The invectives cited below, are undoubtedly part of the European Christian heritage, particularly that of the years 1922-1945.


No, no: It has not been the popular hate-manifestation that Europe's baldheads hoped for. A mere 200 people gathered on September 11 at the Luxemburg Train Station and the Schuman Square. Most of them were Vlaams Belang activists, who saw the event from their own Flemish perspective: To them, not the "Eurabisation of Europe" was the issue, but the fact, that a socialist, francophone, politician initiated the interdiction. Thus: Yellow lion flags all over! (Photo)
The Anglodanish organisers were not amused at all. But who can forbid freedom of expression on foreign soil? Brethren: You'll have to live with national and regional particularities and sensibilities, if you want to create an Europe of your design...
SIOE not only blames the German maverick politician Udo Ulfkotte for it, bur now also the Flemish extremist party Vlaams Belang.

SIOE website (England), 14.9.07:

SIOE considers that Vlaams Belang played right into Thielemans’s hands, which he must now be rubbing together with glee with an “I told you so” look on his fat face.

Some female Vlaams Belang supporters jokingly wore niqabs in Schumann Square.

Well, if Vlaams Belang doesn’t get its finger out of its political ass pretty damned quick, such women may find themselves compelled to wear niqabs when outdoors, if they are allowed out of the house.

The only way Islamism will be defeated is by fighting it single-mindedly, but you have to have a brain to have a mind, and it’s pretty obvious some leaders of some political parties are brainless.

SIOE-England is good in inventing invectives.
"Single-mindedness" is its trademark.
And, when SIOE burst out into the above philippica, it still had to undergo the treason by Udo Ulfkotte, who retired to Cologne at the last moment.

No wonder, that SIOE-England and -Denmark replied to Ulfkotte's demand to share his costs for juridical action in Brussels, with an email, that Ulfkotte says (on the Pax Europa website), he "regrets not to be able to publish it, because of German laws for protecting identities".

But, maybe, that mail did not only reveal some juicy details about the Pax-Europa/SIOE collaboration, but it may be possible, that it also mentioned Ulfkotte's "ass" as the location where he could stick up his bills...

We demand freedom of speech on the internet! We issue an appeal to SIOE, to publish its mail to Ulfkotte. No backroom dealings between self-appointed leaders! Out in the Open, with it!

We want more of this...

(Updated Oct. 1st, 2007)