Europe Losing Freedom of Speech, America Next, Fox News, Brigitte Gabriel via You Tube, March 29, 2016
Posted tagged ‘Islamisation’
Europe Losing Freedom of Speech, America Next
March 30, 2016Ethics of Muslim Immigration, Pt. 2 – US Under Siege?
March 30, 2016Ethics of Muslim Immigration, Pt. 2 – US Under Siege? PJTV via You Tube, March 30, 2016
(A point that I did not see made is that Europe has many more Muslims than America, thus far. — DM)
UK: National Union of Teachers rejects teaching “fundamental British values” as “cultural supremacism”
March 30, 2016UK: National Union of Teachers rejects teaching “fundamental British values” as “cultural supremacism” Jihad Watch, Robert Spencer, March 29, 2016
“We need to fight to reject this notion of British values.” The alternative is cultural and national suicide, but few seem to care in Britain, and those who do are being closely watched by authorities, lest they get out of line. As a free society, Britain is finished.
“Teaching children fundamental British values is act of ‘cultural supremacism,’” by Javier Espinoza,Telegraph, March 28, 2016:
Teaching children fundamental British values is an act of “cultural supremacism”, teachers have said, as members of the National Union of Teachers (NUT) vote to replace the concept with one that includes “international rights”.
A legal duty on teachers to promote so-called British values was passed two years ago after the “Trojan Horse” controversy.
However, teachers argue “fundamental British values” set an “inherent cultural supremacism, particularly in the context of multicultural schools and the wider picture of migration”.
The motion, which was passed at the NUT’s annual conference in Brighton, also calls for a campaign to promote “policies that welcome migrants and refugees into Britain” and called on members to “gather and collate materials on migrants and refugees” to be used in schools.
Following the motion, teachers were accused of looking to play “the role of fifth columnists” and that they risked making children feel guilty about being British.
The motion said migrants make a “huge economic, political and social contribution to the country” and condemned the Prime Minister for “racial stereotyping”.Michel Holland, a teacher from Lambeth, said: “I am the grandson of Irish refugees. We’re all refugees in this country.” He added: “Refugees are welcome here.”
Christopher Denson, a teacher from Coventry, said he had reservations about using the term “fundamental British values” in schools because many of his students had ancestry in countries which had been at the mercy British colonialism.
He said: “The inherent cultural supremacism in that term is both unnecessary and unacceptable. And seen with the Prevent agenda, it belies the most thinly veiled racism and a conscious effort to divide communities.”
He added: “It’s our duty to push a real anti-racist work in all schools. And that doesn’t mean talk of tolerating other’s views, but genuine, inclusive anti-racist work.”
He said every year his school discussed topics such as apartheid and the rise of Islamaphobia. He added: “This year we focussed on the migrant crisis in Calais, the Mediterranean and beyond.
“We organised a politics day for Year 8s in the week before Easter. They had a day to form a political party in their tutor groups to come up with a manifesto, film a broadcast, and make banners and take part in a debate.
“Apart from the quality of the work, the other thing that really made my proud was that every single tutor group had as a policy, ‘refugees welcome, open the borders’.”
He said: “We need to be pushing at every level for anti-racism to be in the core curriculum for every child. We need to continue to gather, collate and publicise such materials and we need to fight to reject this notion of British values, to fight for notions of human values and human rights.
“We have to stand together across communities to bring down barriers, bring down borders, to say no to Islamaphobia, no to anti-Semitism, no to facism and any form of racism. As my Year 8s said, refugees welcome, open the borders.”
Their motion was met with fierce criticism. Chris McGovern of the Campaign for Real Education, said: “Teachers should not be playing the role of fifth columnists in the ideological war currently being fought over our national identity and our national sovereignty.
“Teaching children that British values are part of “cultural supremacism” will, at best, make them feel guilty about being British and, at worst, radicalise them in order to ‘make up’ for the sins of their fathers.
“If one wishes to destroy a nation and build a ‘brave new world’ you begin by indoctrinating and brainwashing the children. This process of ‘re-education’ has started some years ago in our schools and we are, now, seeing its consequences in the suppression of free speech on our university campuses.”
Separately, teachers rejected the Government’s anti-radicalisation strategy over concerns it is silencing conversation in the classroom and damaging community cohesion.
The union called on the Government to withdraw the Prevent strategy regarding schools, which since summer 2015, has obliged teachers to refer to police pupils they suspect of engaging in some sort of terrorist activity or radical behaviour…. (Bold face type in original. — DM)
Op-Ed: Self-destruct: Us or them
March 29, 2016Op-Ed: Self-destruct: Us or them, Israel National News, Leonie Ben-Simon, March 29, 2016
Strange. After Belgium there is a kind of silence. Those continuous Facebook posts blaming Israel and the Jews for everything have mostly gone underground, as journalists lie low, their opinions shattered into smithereens.
The War of Civilizations is well and truly here, right on our doorstep, for the entire world to see. These are not terror attacks. This is World War III in its incarnation of the enemy within: an asymmetric war that if not halted has the potential to go nuclear as Iran tests its long-range missiles with their leaders proclaiming “Death to the Jews” and “Death to Israel.”
Time has a way of blunting the past. Hitler was not a madman when he marshalled his people to carry out his plans. He had a carefully thought-out agenda which we later labelled the personification of evil. But before the Second World War politicians, intellectuals and decision-makers world-wide did not believe that he could possibly carry out his plans. No, appeasement was the solution until millions upon millions lay dead on the ground, burnt in ovens and even burnt and buried alive.
Then there were the genocides that the world ignored in Rwanda, Cambodia, Bosnia and Darfur. And the current war in Syria with millions dead, injured or displaced. Life is simply not valued.
Until now massive amounts of money have financed terror in all of its stages of growth.
Many madrassas are financed to promulgate a particular form of Wahhabism that teaches whole populations not to accommodate values that are not their own.
UNRWA finances millions who call themselves Palestinian refugees but are residents of Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Gaza who were mostly born there. Most of this money is used for buying military materiel, training troops for warmongering and sending rockets into Israeli civilian areas, not for resettlement.
Part of the Arab minority in Israel are also financed by UNRWA with money used to brainwash whole generations in UN schools to hate Jews and Israel.
Then there is the Iranian nuclear industry now helped by a United States agreement with financing that is increasing the risk of nuclear war. There are millions being made in so many of these corrupt societies by those in control who stir up the pot, encouraging everyone except for their own children to die for their cause.
Now that the West is paying the price, the story is quite different. The West has the tools to stop this war in its tracks and allow the enemy to self-destruct. These tools are simply the control of money, the control of gold and the control of resources. Can large-scale murderous activities continue without money? Of course not. Even trading oil for black money can be stopped when the buyers are nations.
The average human being in most societies, we would like to hope, just wants to live out their life peacefully, not to be forced into a war situation. But either way, remove the money and most of the warmongering will self-destruct.
The world’s powers have obviously forgotten the mantra after World War Two and the Holocaust – “Never Again.” Or was it after the First World War – the Great War – The War to End All Wars?
This is the choice: Call it the War that it is, take action to cut the head off the snake by throttling its money and the resource supplies that it lives on. The alternative is that the West will be responsible for its own self-destruction.
Changing the mindset of its young resident enemy through re-education and tracking killers and their associates after events, as the West honestly believes is should do, is not the solution.
It is the weakness of the West.
Op-Ed: EXPOSE: Belgium accepted Islamization for electoral reasons
March 29, 2016Op-Ed: EXPOSE: Belgium accepted Islamization for electoral reasons, Israel National News, Giulio Meotti, March 29, 2016
The conversation opens with a proverb: “In the land of the blind the one-eyed is a king, but not in Belgium, where those who have tried to raise the alarm have been left alone.” These are the words of Alain Destexhe, a prominent figure among the liberals in Brussels, former secretary of Médecins Sans Frontières and president of the International Crisis Group.
He is also author of “Lettre aux progressistes qui flirtent avec l’islam réac” (a letter to the progressives who flirt with reactionary Islam – Editions du Cerisier), a letter-pamphlet that Destexhe dedicated to Philippe Moureaux, the man considered responsible for the transformation of a large suburb of Brussels into the European hub of Islamic holy war.
Two days ago, the Belgian Prime Minister, Charles Michel, said that Moureaux bears a “huge responsibility.”
“For twenty years, he reigned in a sort of conspiracy of silence” continues Destexhe as he talks to us. “At the heart of this system was the powerful Philippe Moureaux, mayor of Molenbeek, media darling, who has had a real moral and political domination over Brussels’ policy. He has created a climate of intellectual terror against the few who dared to stand up. Philippe Moureaux had realized that the future of socialism would depend on the immigrants who would become, symbolically, the new proletariat”.
But who is Moureaux? Professor of Philosophy at the University of Liege, Senator, Director of the Institut Emile Vandervelde (the think tank of the Socialist Party), deputy prime minister in the Martens government, but since 1983 city councilor and then, more importantly, mayor of Molenbeek for twenty years (1992- 2012). Son of minister Charles Moureaux, Philippe has long been the darling of the anti-racist left. The “loi Moureaux”, the Moureaux law, is in fact the rule that in 1981 criminalized acts inspired by xenophobia.
Nicknamed “Moustache” for his mustache, married to a Muslim Tunisian woman, Philippe Moureaux, even before becoming mayor of Molenbeek, had always boasted of defending the rights of immigrants. He included, for the first time in the history of Belgium, Muslim representatives in municipal and regional lists. This scion of the Belgian policy has been the mayor of Molenbeek for so long that the strategic suburb has come to be embodied in Isis’ plans.
His pro-Arab sympathies date back to the war in Algeria, when Moureaux defended the representatives of the Algerian National Liberation Front, also secretly hiding them in the heights of Lustin, in the Namur region.
Merry Hermanus, activist of the Socialist Party in Brussels for decades, also has accused Moureaux: “Without the immigrant populations, the Socialist Party would have been reduced to eight percent of the electorate in Brussels. We have become prisoners.” A few days ago, Moureux published his book, “The Truth About Molenbeek”. He wrote it after the massacres of November 13, in Paris, when the political class began to question his leadership of the Brussels ghetto. In the volume, Moureaux refers to “my Muslim brothers,” writes that one of the engines of jihadism is our “Islamophobia” and punishes “a society that treats immigrants like the Jews before the war”.
“Multiculturalism has failed because we have allowed them to exclude themselves without integrating communities, causing a fragmentation of society,” tells me Alain Destexhe, former Secretary General of Doctors Without Borders. “We’re talking about Belgian citizens who reject the values of our country. Salah Abdeslam is a typical example of a guy who could lead a comfortable life. He had a decent salary and a guaranteed job for life “.
Why did you write the Lettre aux progressistes qui flirtent avec l’islam réac? To denounce the left that you could not criticize, while we were becoming the first country in Europe in number of jihadists and Brussels the weakest link in the fight against this reactionary Islam.
It was an electoral strategy: Moureaux used immigrants to stay in power. Today half of the officers in local councils and in Parliament of the Socialist Party are of foreign origin.
Why did they never demand conditions to give citizenship to immigrants? “It was a political electoral pact. Legal immigration (and illegal) was encouraged. Family reunification was facilitated. There was the granting of voting rights to foreigners, the fight against racism became the new paradigm of political discourse. And more: frequent visits to mosques, subsidies to Muslim associations, the provision of services to the Koranic schools, participation in the festival Eid El Kebir, anti-Israeli marches”.
When he was mayor, Moureaux also urged people to avoid driving during Ramadan, so as not to offend Muslims.
“Most politicians chose not to listen to sermons that became increasingly radical and in this climate radical organizations such as the Belgian Islamic Centre and others have prospered freely. Molenbeek has thus become the fastest growing area of the Brussels region of Belgium. The population of the district increased by 12 percent in 5 years and 30 percent in 15 years. The Islamization is taking place before our eyes. Already 30 percent of Brussels is Islamic”.
And there’s not only Molenbeek: “There are Anderlecht, Brussels City, Schaerbeek, Saint-Josse and Forest. When I was Secretary of Doctors Without Borders, in the ’90s, I often worked in Molenbeek. The population was already largely of immigrant origin, but nobody was trying to assert its own Islamic identity, like today. Women were not wearing the veil, no one asked halal food in schools, few went to the mosque. For this reason, if I look at Belgium today, I am very pessimistic. Perhaps it is too late”.
Patrol Muslim Neighborhoods or Jewish ones
March 29, 2016Patrol Muslim Neighborhoods or Jewish ones, Front Page Magazine, Daniel Greenfield, March 29, 2016
When I go to the synagogue on Passover, there will be a police officer at the door. There will be an NYPD officer in front of every synagogue. Police brass will make the rounds of each synagogue to check security and alertness. Local precincts will be on alert anticipating a Muslim terrorist attack.
As they are on every Jewish holiday.
In France, there are heavily armed soldiers outside synagogues. In Israel, the soldiers are more likely to be found inside the synagogues. That is what Jewish life is like under the shadow of Muslim terrorism.
The ADL, which was not outraged when Bernie Sanders posed with members of anti-Semitic hate groups such as SJP and CAIR, put out a press release denouncing Ted Cruz for calling for heightened police scrutiny of Muslim neighborhoods. But the alternative to a police presence in Muslim areas is a police presence in Jewish areas. If you can’t stop Muslim terrorism at the source, then you have to try and secure all the potential targets. That means police officers in front of synagogues and TSA agents checking your shoes. It means police forces that look like armies and soldiers in the streets.
The ADL denounced Cruz for calling for a return to the NYPD’s old tactics for breaking up Muslim terror plots. One of those “controversial” methods led to the breakup of a Muslim terror plot to blow up a synagogue in Manhattan. Ahmed Ferhani had been interfaith enough to also consider blowing up a church, but he settled on plotting to plant a bomb and then open fire inside a synagogue.
The same left that is now outraged by Cruz’s statement fought for Ferhani. They fought for a Muslim terrorist who boasted at his sentencing, “I intended to create chaos and send a message of intimidation and coercion to the Jewish population of New York City.” In the zero sum game of civil rights, the left fights for the civil rights of Muslim terrorists and against the civil rights of their Jewish victims.
Muslim civil rights is not a matter between the government and Muslims. It is a zero sum game in which protecting the “rights” of Muslims to plan terror attacks takes away the right of their victims to live. It’s a choice between having police informants in a mosque or police officers in front of synagogues. Both send a chilling message. But the former sends a chilling message to terrorists. The latter to their targets.
Liberal groups protesting the idea of Muslim surveillance are offering a false and dishonest choice.
The choice is not whether there will be government surveillance and a police presence. The choice is where will it be? Will it be at a mosque run by the Muslim Brotherhood that terror preachers visit to spread their hate? Or will it be at every church and synagogue that Muslim terrorists might target.
None of the above is not an option. It stops being an option after the first, second and third terror attacks. France tried to ignore Muslim violence against Jews for as long as it could. But even a left-wing government was forced to station armed soldiers in front of Jewish schools and synagogues.
Jonathan Greenblatt, the ADL’s new boss, whines that “special patrols of Muslim neighborhoods” will make Muslims “more vulnerable, more frightened”. What exactly does he think that police patrols of Jewish neighborhoods do? What message does it send to Jewish children going to synagogue that there is a cop at the door because a Muslim terrorist might try to kill them?
Why isn’t Greenblatt more concerned about how those children feel than how their killers do?
Muslim terrorism is not a matter between Muslims and an abstract state. The victims of Muslim terror are not abstractions. They are real people who suffer and bleed. After every Muslim terror attack, the media rushes the victims off the stage to make way for Muslims whining about an imaginary backlash after someone gave them a dirty look on the bus, because it wants us to forget who the real victims are.
The real victims are not in the mosque. They are in the church, the synagogue and the Hindu temple. They are in a New York office building shuffling their papers at 8:45 AM on a Tuesday morning. They are at a Christmas party in California. They are near the finish line in Boston watching the runners pass.
Muslim civil rights violate their civil rights. Muslim civil rights violate their bodies. Muslim civil rights drive nails and ball bearings into their arms and legs. Muslim civil rights lead them to stagger through the smoke and then plummet one hundred stories headfirst into the New York cement. Muslim civil rights force non-Muslims to walk in fear to their own houses of worship waiting for the next attack.
Muslim terrorism forces us to choose between the civil rights of Muslims and those of everyone else.
How we handle Muslim terrorism will define who we are as a people. Will we side with the victims or the perpetrators? Anyone who speaks of the civil rights of the perpetrators instead of those of the victims has chosen the side of the perpetrators. The ADL, like Obama and the media, stands with the perpetrators. It would rather see police in front of synagogues than in front of mosques.
That is a choice. And it is a choice that says a great deal about what the ADL’s real values are.
Liberals used to pride themselves on standing with the oppressed, not with the oppressors. Today, they stand unambiguously with the oppressors. They stand with hate groups and synagogue bombers.
Dutch journalist Elma Drayer complained about Muslims throwing stones at Jews leaving the synagogue after September 11. The police told her not to talk about it because the Muslims were “already being stigmatized”. It wasn’t the stigmatism of the Jewish victims being stoned that the police were concerned with, but the stigmatism of the Muslims who were throwing the stones at them.
This is Muslim civil rights.
We can be concerned about the “stigmatism” of the Muslims whose mosques are being used to plot attacks. Or the stigmatism of their victims. We can worry about how “vulnerable” and “frightened” Muslims feel at the extra police scrutiny or how vulnerable and frightened non-Muslims are because instead of proactively fighting terrorism, they have to reactively hope to stop the next terrorist attack.
The NYPD brass that attacked Ted Cruz’s proposal is reactively deploying police officers to potential targets because it has been prevented from fighting Islamic terrorism proactively by investigating mosques and other Jihadist coordinating hubs. And so there are police officers in front of synagogues and heavily armed ESU tactical teams hanging around high traffic areas hoping that will be enough.
Under Bill de Blasio, New York made a choice between proactively targeting Muslim neighborhoods and reactively deploying everywhere that Muslim terrorists might strike. It was the wrong choice.
In Europe, those same choices were also made. Synagogues were turned into fortresses with bulletproof windows and armored doors. Jews were told not to wear religious clothing outside. Worshipers travel in fear to prayer, passing armed soldiers outside, entering one at a time to avoid becoming bigger targets.
While politicians wrung their hands over Muslim feelings, their victims were left frightened, vulnerable and stigmatized. And now the same pattern is repeating itself in the United States all over again.
The fundamental moral question of every crime, every atrocity and every act of violence against the innocent is do we concern ourselves with the pain of the victims or do we make excuses for the killers. The answer to that question defines who we are, individually and as a people. It also determines whether we will defend ourselves or go on making excuses for the killers even as they are killing us.
When we choose the killers over their victims, we not only betray them, but we betray ourselves.
Free Speech on Trial in the Netherlands – Again
March 29, 2016Free Speech on Trial in the Netherlands – Again, Gatestone Institute, Robbie Travers, March 29, 2016
♦ Freedom of speech is the ultimate liberal value — and it is the first value that people who wish to control us would take away.
♦ If a court in a Western society decides to censor or punish Geert Wilders or others for non-violent speech, the court not only attacks the very humanistic values and liberal society we claim to hold dear; it brings us a step closer to totalitarianism. Even the idea of having an “acceptable” range of views is inherently totalitarian.
♦ But what does one do if immigrants prefer not to assimilate? Europeans may be faced with a painful choice: What do they want more, the humanistic values of individual freedom or an Islamized Europe?
♦ Censorship is not a path we should wish to take. While we may rightly fear those on the political right, we would do well to fear even more the autocratic thought-police and censorship on the political left.
You are not truly a proponent of free speech unless you defend speech you dislike as fervently as speech you like.
There are many issues concerning the views of the Dutch MP, Geert Wilders, head of rapidly growing political party, the Freedom Party (Partij voor de Vrijheid, or PVV). Dutch prosecutors have charged Wilders with insulting deliberately a group of people because of their race and inciting hatred. Wilders’s trial focuses on a speech he gave, in which he asked a crowd of supports whether they wanted more or fewer Moroccans in the Netherlands. In another instance, Wilders is reported to have stated that The Hague should be “a city with fewer burdens and if possible fewer Moroccans.” Wilders admits to having made the remarks.
Geert Wilders during his March 2014 speech, where he asked “Do you want more or fewer Moroccans?” (Image source: nos.nl video screenshot)
The remarks Wilders made about Moroccans, as they target only one nationality rather than immigration in general, may sound ill-judged or distasteful to some. But do Wilders’s comments, that there should be fewer Moroccans, actually incite hatred or violence? His remarks do not suggest that people attack Moroccans or that people should hate Moroccans; they simply suggest that there should be lower levels of immigration from Morocco.
While Wilder’s comments could certainly be convincingly portrayed as preying on people’s anti-immigration sentiment, does that actually make them an insult to Moroccans, or is he simply supporting policies he thinks would benefit his country? As Wilders himself said in court last week, “What if someone had said, ‘Fewer Syrians?'”
As a society, individuals are responsible for their actions, so if someone acts upon a distortion of Wilders’s words, or is violent because of them, Wilders should not be held responsible for their actions, even if he might choose his words more carefully in the future. A line is dangerous to draw: if we start criminalizing people who have anti-immigration views, poorly expressed or not, then where do we stop?
Is it also possible that because Wilders is labelled as politically “far right,” people on the political “left,” instead of proposing counterarguments, would like to shut him up by branding him a “racist”?
Here are several more statements, none from Wilders; no one who said them has been prosecuted:
- “We also have s*** Moroccans over here.” Rob Oudkerk, a Dutch Labour Party (PvDA) politician.
- “We must humiliate Moroccans.” Hans Spekman, PvDA politician.
- “Moroccans have the ethnic monopoly on trouble-making.” Diederik Samsom, PvDA politician.
One can see that these statements by politicians of the Labour Party, which is one of the current governing parties of the Netherlands, are more inciting, condemnable statements against Moroccans than anything Wilders has said. Yet no prosecution has been initiated against these individuals.
Would it not be better to discuss a nuanced immigration policy openly, like adults, and thereby eliminate prejudice through rational argument?
Prosecuting Wilders has only emboldened the anti-immigrationists, making them less responsive to reason and discussion. Ironically, this trial has moved many left-liberals, who might be criticizing his views, instead to defend his fundamental rights.
On limiting immigration in general, some critics consider that calling for a moratorium on immigration is illiberal — often other groups such as Christians and Yazidis might be fleeing from ISIS or other extremist Islamic organizations. Basing immigration on nationality might also bring back memories of Nazi Germany, when restrictions often were based on crude religious, ethnic and national caricatures. Other critics seem uncomfortable with calls for the dominance of “Christian, Jewish and humanist traditions” within Dutch culture. How, they ask, can one effectively police a “culture” without seemingly authoritarian restrictions on those who might not fit into it?
Still other critics argue that prohibiting the construction of new mosques restricts religious freedom, and could cause further tension with members of the Islamic community, instead of working with them to solve their conflicts with the West.
But what does one do if immigrants prefer not to assimilate?
That, for example, is not an anti-immigration argument; it is a legitimate question that needs to be answered. There are also many questions that pertain to what a society might look like if there is a tectonic demographic shift, along with a tectonic shift in culture that might accompany it.
As one commentator explained, if you have an apple pie with a few cranberries, it is still an apple pie; but if you keep adding more and more cranberries, at some point it is no longer an apple pie, it is a cranberry pie. That is what the Aztecs faced when the Spaniards arrived in South America. That is what Christianity faced in Turkey when the Muslim Turks arrived. Today, in much of the Middle East, Judaism and Christianity have virtually ceased to exist.
Hard as it might be to contemplate, Europeans might at some point be faced with a painful choice: Which do they want more, the humanistic values of individual freedom or an Islamized Europe?
Whether or not one agrees, especially with the tone, this is the dilemma Wilders has chosen to face — before a transformation becomes so fundamental that it cannot be reversed.
Although he has come down on the side of liberal values, this is seen by critics as violating other liberal values, such as not to judge one culture superior to another.
But what should one tolerate, if the other culture advocates stoning women to death for adultery? Or, without four male witnesses attesting to the contrary, regarding rape as adultery? Or executing people for having a different sexual preference, or religion, or for leaving the religion? Or beating one’s wife? Or condoning slavery? Or officially regarding women as worth half a man? Is it a humanistic, liberal value to stay silent — to condemn at least half the population to that?
What if before the Civil War in the United States people had said, “Slavery? But that is their culture!” The British in India outlawed suttee — a ritual in which widows are thrown live onto their husband’s funeral pyre. Is it humanistic say “but that is their culture”?
These are values over which wars have been fought.
So even if many of the policies of Wilders might drastically differ even from those of this author, in a truly liberal, humanistic society, it is one’s duty defend Wilders’s right to express his views without fear of retribution.
If we fail to do that, what we end up with is an authoritarian state in which government agencies decide which views are acceptable and which are not. We have lived through that before with the Soviet Union, and we are now living through it again with countries such as Saudi Arabia, Russia, China, Pakistan and Iran. A happy picture, they are not.
As history shows, as in the French or Russian or Cuban Revolutions, when one person’s views are suppressed, eventually everyone’s views are suppressed. Who decides on the deciders?
If a court in a Western society decides to censor or punish Geert Wilders or others for non-violent speech, the court not only attacks the very humanistic values and liberal society we claim to hold dear; it brings us a step closer to totalitarianism. Even the idea of having an “acceptable” range of views is inherently totalitarian.
“Acceptable” thoughts, by definition, do not need protecting. It is the “unacceptable” thoughts that do. The reason the right to freedom of speech exists is to protect the minority from the majority — so we can openly, freely exchange opinions and have discussions.
If we wish to have any kind of democracy in more than just name, people need to able openly to challenge ideas that are considered unquestionable, even sacred, as well as people who are considered sacred.
Only open discussion can have a beneficial influence by highlighting problems and shaping policy. In discussing even outlandish views, we are reaffirming our right to say them, justifying why liberal values of freedom are paramount. Freedom of speech is the ultimate liberal value — and it is the first freedom that people who wish to control us would take away. As the historian Clare Spark wrote, “Most of European history, with the exception of England, repressed speech that was anti-authoritarian. One might think of Plato, the Spanish Inquisition, and the career of Spinoza for just a few examples.”
Therefore, no proponent of democracy, humanism or liberal values should call for Wilders to be punished or censored for his remarks, even if they might be thought questionably expressed. When you defend the fundamental right of another to express his view, it does not mean that you agree with the view. It does not mean that you would refrain from attacking that view if it seemed based on flawed premises — or even if it did not. Freedom of speech means opposing someone with counterarguments, not trying to silence him.
If Wilders’ views are thought to be anti-humanistic, criminalizing his right to speak freely is even more so. Criminalizing speech only harks back to Giordano Bruno, who was burned at the stake for “blasphemy,” for saying there were a plurality of worlds; or to the trial of Galileo Galilei for claiming that the earth moves around the sun; or the Scopes trial, which attempted to criminalize Darwin’s theory of evolution.
It is restrictions on free speech that are producing many of the worst mockeries of justice today, in countries such as China, North Korea, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Russia, and Iran.
Repressing speech only dangerously hinders the liberal cause. Groups that, in an authoritarian manner, call for censorship and the suppression of debate are being allowed to thrive. We are seeing this now in America on campuses and in the authoritarian attempts to prevent voters from hearing presidential candidates by disrupting speeches. When one fails to answer difficult questions or tries to silence their proponents, instead of solving the problem of prejudice, you are in reality feeding their prejudices and allowing them to grow unchallenged.
We urgently need be concerned about laws that would make “being insulted,” a criminal offense. Where does an “insult” start or stop? In addition, people who claim to be offended might just be using the law to try to silence others with whom they disagree. The culpatory aspect of these laws should probably be reconsidered, and possibly revised by the Dutch government, the United Nations in its UNHRC Resolution 16/18, and others trying to restrict free speech.
Finally, criminalizing views such as those of Wilders does not extinguish them. Yes, people might feel intimidated from raising ideas for fear of reprisals, but the suppressed ideas will continue to fester, often with an even stronger force.
It is completely understandable why many are not quick to come to the aid of Wilders because they deem him an opponent. However, if there is one rallying call to those who are in doubt of whether to support Wilders, it is this: authoritarianism is our enemy, whether it comes from Islamism, or laws restricting speech. We may not like that we have to defend people we may even regard as racists or xenophobes, but if we do not defend the rights of all, then who will be next among us to have his rights eroded?
Censorship is not a path we should wish to take. While we may rightly fear those on the political right, we would do well to fear even more the autocratic thought-police and censorship on the political left.
Wilders should not be standing trial for what he has said. Could there be a question of the case against Wilders being political? It sure looks like that.
Pakistan on the Mediterranean
March 28, 2016Pakistan on the Mediterranean, Washington Free Beacon, Michael Rubin, March 28, 2016
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan listens during a ceremony to commemorate the 101st anniversary of the Battle of Gallipoli in Canakkale, Turkey, Friday, March 18, 2016. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Friday warned Europe that it, too, could fall victim to attacks by Kurdish militants following a terror attack in Ankara that killed 37 people. (Kayhan Ozer, Presidential Press Service, Pool via AP)
President Obama will welcome Erdoğan to Washington this week for a strategy meeting about countering the ISIS.
**********************
On March 18, European and Turkish diplomats signed off on a comprehensive deal on migrants pouring from Syria, Iraq, and elsewhere in the Middle East through Turkey and into the European Union. Under the terms of the deal, for every illegal migrant the E.U. returns to Turkey, Turkey would send one refugee for resettlement in Europe. Additionally, Turkey and Europe agreed to re-open discussions concerning the Muslim country’s efforts to join the E.U., and Europe agreed to allow Turks visa-free travel throughout the Schengen zone.
Two days after the deal was announced, a Turk who had joined the Islamic State blew himself up among tourists on Istanbul’s Istiklal Street, one of the city’s major shopping and tourism districts. Two days after that, ISIS suicide bombers killed dozens in two separate attacks in Brussels. ISIS called what occurred in Belgium “a drop in the sea” compared with what the terrorists have in store for “nations of disbelief.”
Turkey and its president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, have used the growing threat to argue that the West must better conform its policies to Turkey’s desires. In the wake of the Brussels attacks, Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu chided Europe. “Europe has no partner other than Turkey to provide its regional security,” he declared, adding a subtle threat: “They should see this reality and act accordingly.” Meanwhile President Obama will welcome Erdoğan to Washington this week for a strategy meeting about countering the ISIS.
The reality Davutoğlu deliberately ignores, however, is his own country’s role in allowing ISIS to develop and metastasize. The Turkish government is adept at pulling the wool over Western officials’ eyes. Erdoğan pays lip service in meetings with European and American officials to the importance of both democracy and the Turkish partnership with the West, for example, declaring, “Secularism is the protector of all beliefs and religions.” He speaks differently to his Turkish audience. As mayor of Istanbul, he described himself as “the imam of Istanbul” and declared, “Thank God almighty, I am a servant of Shari‘a.” He is famous for his quip, “Democracy is like a streetcar. When you come to your stop, you get off.” In recent years, he has declared his goal to be to “raise a religious generation.”
This “religious generation” is flowing into the cauldron of Syria and Iraq. More than 30,000 foreign fighters from as many as 100 countries now fight with the Islamic State. The bulk of these soldiers—perhaps 90 percent—crossed into the Islamic State from Turkey. Turkish visa policy contributes to the problem. A direct correlation can be drawn between foreign fighters serving ISIS and those nationalities from which Turkish authorities require no visa or provide waivers: Several thousand more Moroccans and Tunisians, who need no visas to transit Turkey, fight with ISIS in Syria and Iraq than Algerians and Libyans, who do. If Erdoğan simply required visas in advance for those under the age of 40 coming from countries like Morocco, Tunisia, Lebanon, and Jordan—or, for that matter, from Russia, the United Kingdom, and Australia—the flood of recruits into the Islamic State would slow to a trickle.
ISIS terrorists regularly traverse the Turkish border, not only for medical care but also for rest and relaxation. Some merchants in Istanbul openly sell ISIS propaganda and promise that proceeds from their sale will benefit the group’s fight in Syria and Iraq. Smugglers peddling contraband oil to fund ISIS rely on Turkey to bring the oil to market, paying off local and perhaps even national officials of the AKP, Turkey’s governing party, along the way.
Turkey has done more than lend passive support to Islamist radicals. In his 13 years in power, Erdoğan has transformed Turkey from a Western-leaning democracy into Pakistan-on-the-Mediterranean. There was, for example,the leak of documents from the Millî İstihbarat Teşkilatı (MİT), Turkey’s intelligence service, showing Turkish support of the Nusra Front, an al Qaeda affiliate operating in Syria. And, rather than give medals to the Turkish soldiers who intercepted truckloads of weaponry destined for Syrian radicals, Erdoğan ordered their arrest.
Likewise, when Turkish journalists exposed—with photographic evidence—the transfer of munitions and other supplies from the Turkish border to ISIS, Erdoğan’s response was not to applaud the media but to seize the newspaper and arrest its editors and many of its reporters.
There is also evidence that, as Kurds fighting ISIS in Kobani in 2014 began to turn the tide against the radical group, Erdoğan and Turkish intelligence officials allowed ISIS fighters to pass through Turkey and attack Kobani from across the border, a flank the town’s largely Kurdish residents assumed was secure.
From the beginning, Erdoğan has looked at the Syrian refugee crisis not as a humanitarian tragedy but an arrow in his quiver. Inside Turkey, he has offered Sunni refugees Turkish citizenship if they settle in Turkish provinces currently dominated by the Shi‘ite offshoot Alevi sect. And, whereas the world condemns ISIS “genocide” against the Yezidi, the Yezidi who sheltered in Turkey were then victimized, again, by local AKP-run municipalities who refused to provide services offered to Sunni refugees.
Allowing Turkey to choose which refugees to send to Europe and promising to eliminate visa restrictions for Turks only rewards Erdoğan for his behavior and gives him additional leverage in his dealings with the West. Nor is this the type of policy Erdoğan’s neighbors would support. Earlier this year, King Abdullah II of Jordan told Congress, “The fact that terrorists are going to Europe is part of Turkish policy and Turkey keeps on getting a slap on the hand, but they are let off the hook.” He added that, “radicalization was being manufactured in Turkey.”
Abdullah’s message fell on deaf in ears in Washington, Brussels, Paris, and Berlin. It is Erdoğan who has the initiative as he pursues the Islamicization of Turkey and neo-Ottoman imperialism. He has built a Pakistan on the Mediterranean: an incubator of terror that markets itself as the only available partner of the West, with tragic results.
American Fascists and delicate little snowflakes
March 26, 2016American Fascists and delicate little snowflakes, Dan Miller’s Blog, March 26, 2016
(The views expressed in this article are mine and do not necessarily reflect those of Warsclerotic or its other editors. — DM)
Fascists want to take away our freedom of speech. So do the delicate little snowflakes infesting our institutions of “higher learning.” How much worse will it get over the next few years? Substantially worse, I fear.
In the above video, Bill Whittle recounts numerous Fascist attempts to shut down those with different ideas. I’ll not repeat what he says. Instead, I’ll point out a few other Fascist efforts.
Islamist Fascists
In line with its “misconception” that Islam is the religion of peace and tolerance, the Obama administration has consistently courted the Muslim Brotherhood and its affiliate, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) — which do everything they can to shut down all discussion of whether Islam is peaceful and tolerant and whether it should change. The Obama administration, following its lead, has ignored Muslim voices for reform.
What does Hillary Clinton think? Apparently that Islam is fine the way it is.
Ayaan Hirsi Ali has a different view.
As I noted here, Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a former Muslim. She had been scheduled to receive an honorary degree from Brandeis University in April of 2014. However,
Brandeis University in Massachusetts announced Tuesday that it had withdrawn the planned awarding of an honorary degree to Ayaan Hirsi Ali, a staunch critic of Islam and its treatment of women, after protests from students and faculty.
The university said in a statement posted online that the decision had been made after a discussion between Ali and university President Frederick Lawrence.
“She is a compelling public figure and advocate for women’s rights, and we respect and appreciate her work to protect and defend the rights of women and girls throughout the world,” said the university’s statement. “That said, we cannot overlook certain of her past statements that are inconsistent with Brandeis University’s core values.” [Emphasis added.]
Ali, a member of the Dutch Parliament from 2003 to 2006, has been quoted as making comments critical of Islam. That includes a 2007 interview with Reason Magazine in which she said of the religion, “Once it’s defeated, it can mutate into something peaceful. It’s very difficult to even talk about peace now. They’re not interested in peace. I think that we are at war with Islam. And there’s no middle ground in wars.”
Ali was raised in a strict Muslim family, but after surviving a civil war, genital mutilation, beatings and an arranged marriage, she renounced the faith in her 30s. She has not commented publicly on the issue of the honorary degree.
. . . .
More than 85 of about 350 faculty members at Brandeis signed a letter asking for Ali to be removed from the list of honorary degree recipients. And an online petition created Monday by students at the school of 5,800 had gathered thousands of signatures from inside and outside the university as of Tuesday afternoon.
“This is a real slap in the face to Muslim students,” said senior Sarah Fahmy, a member of the Muslim Student Association who created the petition said before the university withdrew the honor.
“But it’s not just the Muslim community that is upset but students and faculty of all religious beliefs,” she said. “A university that prides itself on social justice and equality should not hold up someone who is an outright Islamophobic.” [Emphasis added.]
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) also got into the act:
“It is unconscionable that such a prestigious university would honor someone with such openly hateful views.”
The organization sent a letter to university President Frederick Lawrence on Tuesday requesting that it drop plans to honor Ali.
“This makes Muslim students feel very uneasy,” Joseph Lumbard, chairman of Islamic and Middle Eastern studies, said in an interview. “They feel unwelcome here.” [Emphasis added.]
On September 15, Hirsi Ali spoke at Yale University. The usual suspects did not want her to speak.
WFB Program president Rich Lizardo tells the story of events that followed the WFB Program’s public announcement of the event in the Yale Daily News column “We invited Ayaan Hirsi Ali to speak at Yale–and outrage ensued.”
Following the public announcement, the Muslim Students Association at Yale went through its usual routine, first seeking to have Ms. Hirsi Ali disinvited (though it disputes this), then to limit the subject matter of her speech, then to impose conditions on her speech that would stigmatize her. In the spirit of WFB himself, Lizardo stood firm.
The MSA routine worked at Brandeis; at Yale, not so much. Not this time.
Poor delicate little snowflakes. Isn’t it a shame that they might be exposed to new ideas that are alien to them? That they were not required to attend and listen to those ideas is, apparently, inconsequential. They did not anyone to listen to them.
Here’s a video of her remarks. The introductions are a trifle long and add little value. The questions she was asked at the end and her answers are, however, interesting. They begin at 55 minutes into the video.
When I posted the video here, I observed that
She seemed to be speaking less to the “choir” and more to a broader audience which she was trying to convince. To that end, she was as conciliatory as she could be without abandoning her thesis that Islam is the religion of repression, submission and death, not peace; that it is highly dangerous to Western civilization, including our concepts of freedom and democracy. “Radical” Islam is rising, becoming even worse and it must be defeated.
Even to try to defeat Islam, we need to defeat the increasing efforts to eliminate freedom of speech at home in favor of speech that is politically and multiculturally correct and therefore not free. [Emphasis added.]
On April 7, 2015, Hirsi Ali spoke at the National Press Club. Here’s a video of her remarks on the Clash of Civilizations, largely based on her book Heretic, which I later reviewed here. There, she writes optimistically of the possibility (but not the probability) of an Islamic revolution, someday.
There is a clash of civilizations. Muslims in Western countries generally refuse to help the police prevent Islamic terror attacks, such as recently occurred in Brussels.
There is a reason why Israel razes the homes of terrorists. It is because Israelis know that a terrorist cannot plot and carry out an attack without the knowledge and help of his or her immediate relatives, and further, the entire community. Punitive home demolition is meant to serve as a deterrent, the idea being that a would-be terrorist’s family will fear losing their home and thus persuade him or her against the attack.
In fact, knowing that it “takes a village” to aid and abet a terrorist is precisely why the terrorists responsible for the Paris and recent Brussels bombings could operate “right under the noses” of their victims. And it is why some are calling for heightened scrutiny of Muslim communities across the West, and right here in the U.S., despite cries of Islamophobia.
The MailOnline reports that police in Molenbeek — a district known for spawning jihadis like the France and Brussels attackers — have pleaded with local Muslims for help in finding the terror suspects only to have their pleas rebuffed.
Western nations which welcome and care for them are spit upon. “See something, say something” did not work before the San Bernardino Islamic attack. Perhaps those who saw something but said nothing remained silent because they feared being characterized as Islamophobes.
Here is a recent video of an interview with a teenage Yazidi girl who escaped the Islamic State. Is Islam the religion of peace and respect for females? For people of other religions?
In the unlikely event that any delicate little snowflakes watch it, will they be offended by its presence on You Tube, by the “lies” told by the Yazidi girl or by the truth of her statements?
Multicultural Fascists
Europe has many multicultural Fascists and Obama’s America has fewer. However, those who propagate the multicultural fantasy are winning. In the past, we sought immigrants who brought with them cultures compatible with ours. Now, Obama demands that we accept immigrants whose cultures of violence, drugs, gangs, crime and the like are not compatible. We have sanctuary cities where gang, other violence and drug smuggling and use are endemic. Although state efforts to enforce Federal immigration laws which the Obama administration refuses to enforce have been struck down by the judiciary, the Obama administration somewhat impotently challenged the sanctuary cities this year, only following pressure from the Congress.
Here is a video of remarks made by Victor Davis Hanson about one year ago on the travesty of “illiberal illegal immigration.” Illegal immigration breeds illegality across the board.
A transcript of his remarks is available here. Here’s just a short snippet:
[I]t’s a controversial topic. If I had said to you 20 years ago, 10 years ago, we’re going to get in a situation in the United States where 160,000 people are going to arrive at the border and break immigration law and we’re going to let them all in at once without any prior check, medical histories, you would think I was a right-wing conspiracist. If I had said to you, we’re going to have a president who is going to not only nullify existing federal immigration law, but on 22 occasions prior to that nullification warn us that he couldn’t nullify it, or, if I had said, he’s not only going to nullify federal immigration law, which he said would be unconstitutional, but that he is going to punish members of ICE, the border patrol, who follow existing law rather than his own unlawful existing order, I could go on, but you’d all think this was surreal, Orwellian, it couldn’t happen. Yet that’s the status quo as we look at it today.
Our borders are worse than porous; they are open and little effort is being made to keep criminals, drug dealers, gang members and other violent people out. While Obama has many “top” priorities, doing that is not among them.
As noted in a post at American Thinker,
Cultures are either consciously abandoned, or consciously enforced. The theory of multiculturalism has always been a tonic for simpletons, since it celebrates the perpetuation and imposition of an incompatible culture, still being practiced by those who carry it, upon a host culture with which it is mutually exclusive. Multiculturalism is entirely subversive. It is intended to force one or more cultures upon the hosts who do not want or need them. Since both cultures cannot successfully coexist within the host, which has its own successful working culture, the purpose of the exercise has always been fraudulent. The “melting pot” concept worked not because of the concept of multiculturalism, but as testament against it. Those who came here in our parents’ and grandparents’ generation consciously chose to abandon the cultures they left in favor of the American culture. They became Americans, embracing one culture.
If one was being less generous than to call multiculturalism a tonic for simpletons, it would be more accurate to say that modern leftist multiculturalism is actually a weapon. Its purpose is not to enhance the host, but to consume it. If the host’s culture is peaceful, it has no use for malcontents who insist upon the dominance of their native culture. Malcontents, in the form of angry and entitled guests, foment chaos and disorder. And yet, the leftists insist that we demonstrate our cultural superiority by abandoning the superiority of our own culture and importing incompatible languages, traditions, practices, and morals.
Here’s a snapshot of our current Southern border by Sharyl Attkisson:
Conclusions
The delicate little snowflakes who demand safe spaces from reality in what were once institutions of higher learning seem to be increasing in number. They are our next generation and will soon begin to elect those with whose milquetoast views they agree. It will be a sad day for America when our nation mirrors those “educational” institutions. Solutions? I have none to offer, other than the development of backbones by their university administrators and teachers; perhaps even by their own parents. Perhaps some little snowflakes will be told, “If you don’t want to be exposed to views inconsistent with those you already hold, don’t come here.”
Living in America should be an honor not granted those who despise and abuse her by coming illegally, by illegally bringing crime and violence or by supporting those who do. Falsely characterizing Islam as the religion of peace and tolerance should not be “who we are” as Obama claims. Most of us are not deluded fools, I hope.
Oh well. Somehow we got Obama as the Commander in Chief. Twice.
This message was posted just eight days before the recent Islamic attack in Brussels, Belgium:
Sweden? Negative Image? What Could You Be Thinking?
March 26, 2016Sweden? Negative Image? What Could You Be Thinking? One Month of Islam and Multiculturalism in Sweden: February 2016, Gatestone Institute, Ingrid Carlqvist, March 26, 2016
♦ Two “unaccompanied refugee children,” remanded in January on suspicion of the aggravated rape of a younger boy at an asylum house in Alvesta, were revealed to be much older than 15 years old — the age they claimed to be. One of them, an Afghan man, wrote on Facebook that he was 44.<
♦ On Sweden’s most popular TV show, host Gina Dirawi and a children’s choir rewrote Sweden’s national anthem — instead of “I want to live, I want to die in the North”, they sang, “I want to live, I want to die on Earth.” The producer stated that the show “is not for those who get upset if the national anthem is changed. The focus should be on the people of this country who have ‘different roots.'”
♦ Adult migrants with residence permits now have a right to bypass Swedes in waiting lists for housing. There is a massive shortage of housing, which has led to young Swedes, well into their 30s, being forced to live with their parents.
No one seems to have given any thought as to where all the people who are granted asylum in Sweden are supposed to live. There is a massive shortage of housing, which has led to young Swedes, well into their 30s, being forced to live with their parents. In 2014, a report from the Swedish Union of Tenants (Hyresgästföreningen) disclosed that close to 300,000 young people between the ages of 20-27 do not have their own place to live. The Immigration Service has the right to send “unaccompanied refugee children,” who are often, in fact, undocumented adults, to the local municipalities — and then it is their problem to procure accommodation. It was also recently reported that adult migrants with residence permits have a right to bypass Swedes in waiting lists for housing. The municipality of Skellefteå now plans to inventory all the empty houses in the countryside, looking for possible alternatives for migrants.
February 3: Teenage girls attending the Vårboskolan high school in the Malmö suburb of Arlöv were sexually assaulted and stalked by young migrants in their 20s who take Swedish language classes at the school, according to the local daily newspaper, Sydsvenskan. As most of the migrants are male, the gender balance at the school has been severely skewed. 14-year-old Emilia and Nora told Sydsvenskan:
“The guys stared at us and made kissing noises. They said things we did not quite understand, told us we were sexy and good looking and stuff like that. And they took pictures of us and other girls with their phones. During recess, they stand outside waiting for us and then they follow us. Sometimes guys have groped us in the lunch line.”
February 6: A gang of youths threw stones at a police patrol in the immigrant-heavy neighborhood of Hageby in Norrköping. The police officers were monitoring traffic when one of their cars was set on fire by a gang of 15 or 20 youths, who then proceeded to throw stones at the officers. Four youths, aged 16-18, were removed from the scene, but inexplicably not arrested.
February 7: An ambulance was vandalized by unknown persons in the immigrant-heavy suburb of Tensta in northwestern Stockholm. Three windows of the vehicle were smashed. If the patient for whom the ambulance had come had been critically ill, “the consequences,” as the police reported, “could have been dire.”
Åke Östman, head of Emergency Medical Services in the Greater Stockholm area, told the daily, Dagens Nyheter:
“I cannot understand why anyone would do this — we are not a government authority; we are there to help. The next time, it might be their parents. If the ambulances have to wait for a police escort, people living in certain areas may get inferior service.”
February 8: According to an opinion poll commissioned by the daily, Dagens Nyheter, immigration and integration are now the leading political issues for Swedish voters. 40% of respondents said that immigration was the most important issue — double the number from previous poll. Johanna Laurin Gulled, a research analyst at the Ipsos polling institute, told the paper that this was the biggest shift the institute has ever seen in any poll. Education, the most important issue in June of last year, is now in second place.
February 11: A Kurdish immigrant in Stockholm was sentenced to 18 years in prison for killing his wife. The apparent motive was that a few months before the murder, his wife had worn to her brother’s wedding a dress that, according to the husband, “made her look like a whore.” The couple was separated at the time of the murder, but the husband had come to their apartment to collect some things for their young son. The argument over the dress resumed. The husband claims he does not remember what happened next; he just suddenly found himself covered in blood and holding a knife. The autopsy found that he had stabbed his wife 66 times.
February 11: Aside from the housing shortage for migrants to Sweden, there is also a severe absence of appropriate jobs. Rather than talk about the problems that come with the illiteracy of so many immigrants, the Swedish government announced that it is now going to introduce a “fast track” for immigrants claiming to have a teaching degree. Recently, Swedish schools have gone from being top-rated among the OECD countries to being among the worst. Thus, fewer and fewer people want to work in the school system. In 2013 the Swedish Teachers’ Union described the situation as “extremely serious.” The government still claims that many of the new arrivals are highly educated, and now it wants to speed up the process of approving foreign teaching degrees. Critics maintain that the “fast track” for immigrants is probably a euphemism for lowering school standards even more.
February 13: One person was killed and three wounded in a knife fight at an asylum seekers’ house in Ljusne. When the police finally entered the building, they took three people into custody. Lars Ulander, the Immigration Service Unit Chief in Söderhamn, told the daily, Aftonbladet: “I thought, damn it. We had a conference … I actually said that we should be thankful things that have happened in other places have not happened here, and then this happens. It is incredibly sad.” A man in his 20s is being held, but three other suspects remain at liberty. The police investigation is expected to take some time due to a shortage of interpreters.
February 16: A Danish actor, Kim Bodnia, star of the acclaimed Swedish-Danish TV show, The Bridge (Bron), revealed in an English-language interview on Israeli television that it was the rampant antisemitism in Malmö was one of the reasons he left the show. Antisemitism “is growing, especially in Malmö, where we shot ‘The Bridge’, in Sweden. It’s not very nice and comfortable to be there as a Jewish person. … I don’t feel so safe there, you know. It’s not funny, it’s growing and we have to deal with it every day…”
February 16: The Administrative Court supported the decision of the municipal government of Örnsköldsvik that the children of traveling Roma beggars are entitled to go to school, free of charge.
During the past few years, as a result of European Union rules on free movement, Sweden has been flooded by thousands of Bulgarian and Romanian Roma. They have a right to stay in the country for three months, after which, if they are not employed, they are required to go back to their own country. However, many choose to stay in Sweden illegally and earn a living through begging; there are now beggars sitting outside virtually every store in the country.
Last year, the government appointed Martin Valfridsson as “National Coordinator for Vulnerable EU Citizens,” to investigate what could be done about the problem. His conclusion was that long-term efforts and co-operation between Sweden, Bulgaria and Romania are necessary to get to the root of the problem. Just to give the Roma money and social benefits is actually not “kind”, but rather, exacerbates the problem. As he explained in an interview with the TT news agency, “Children of beggars should not be offered schooling as a general rule. And to put money in the beggars’ cups is not a good idea in the long run.”
February 16: Swedish public television reported that more and more “refugees,” tired of waiting for a decision on their asylum application, return home. This year more than 1,100 people have retracted their asylum applications; in 2015, there were 4,200 retractions. The most common reasons for retractions are that it takes a long time for cases to be processed; that there are long waiting periods for family reunions, and that there is a strained housing situation. SVT public television interviewed “Ahmed” from Iraq, who arrived in Sweden in April 2015, after crossing the Mediterranean in a rubber boat and walking several weeks across Europe:
“We were told by people around us that the asylum process would not take more than a few months, but it has almost been a year and I am still waiting for a decision. My family cannot wait any more, I have small children who need me; my eldest son is not able to provide for the entire family.”
February 18: A Somali-Swedish girl, 17, who was arrested in Vienna on suspicion of planning to join the Islamic State in Syria, was sentenced to one year in prison. However, as eleven months were a suspended sentence, and she had already spent one month in custody, she was immediately released. Pictures of executions performed by ISIS were found on her mobile phone, as well as a chat history in which she wrote delightedly about the Paris terror attacks. During her trial, she refused to answer any questions.
February 18: A trial began against an 18-year-old man, accused of throwing a hand grenade at a police van in August 2015. The prosecutor, Stefan Creutz, demanded eight years in prison for the accused, saying that the young man seemed “indifferent to whether people lived or died.” Four policemen were inside the van at the time of the attack.
The defendant was arrested after his DNA was found on the lever of the grenade. But the District Court of Södertörn apparently did not find it beyond a reasonable doubt that the man’s DNA had wound up on the grenade at the time of the attack, and acquitted him. He was, however, sentenced to three years in prison for weapons offenses and two aggravated robberies.
Left: A police van, riddled with shrapnel from a hand grenade attack in Stockholm last year. The man accused of the attack was recently acquitted, because the court doubted that his DNA, found on the grenade’s lever, had gotten there at the time of the attack. Right: Kim Bodnia, star of the acclaimed Swedish-Danish TV show, The Bridge (Bron), revealed last month that one of the reasons he left the show was the rampant antisemitism in Malmö (the filming location).
February 18: Two “unaccompanied refugee children,” remanded in January on suspicion of the aggravated rape of a younger boy at an asylum house in Alvesta, were revealed to be much older than 15 years old — the age they claimed to be. One of them, an Afghan man, wrote on Facebook that he was 44. Prosecutor Emma Berge said during a press conference that x-rays of the men’s teeth also showed that the other suspect was decidedly older than 18. According to the indictment, the men had lured the victim to a wooded area and took turns raping the boy, while filming the act with a mobile phone camera. The municipality has reported itself to the supervisory authority, the Health and Social Care Inspectorate (IVO), for allowing a child to share a room with older men.
February 18: A 27-year-old asylum seeker from Iran was sentenced to 10 months in prison for sexually assaulting a mentally disabled woman. In the verdict, the woman is described as living “in a supportive housing facility with a guardian. Developmentally, she is far behind a normal person. She can neither read nor write. She is naïve and immature and has trouble remembering things.”
The Iranian man lured the victim into a public restroom, where he molested her. Thanks to DNA evidence, he was sentenced to 10 months in prison, then to deportation, but will be banned from Sweden for only five years.
February 19: The daily newspaper GT reported that the management of the housing facility for “unaccompanied refugee children,” where Alexandra Mezher was murdered on January 25, was aware that her killer had severe psychological problems. The facility had even been granted extra funds from social services, yet Alexandra Mezher was working there alone that night.
Mezher’s murderer initially claimed to be 15 years old and from Somalia, turned out in fact to be a 25-year-old man from Ethiopia. He had at first lived with a foster family and gone to school, but when it became clear that he had serious problems, the family demanded that he be moved to a facility where he could get “professional help.” Before the murder, he was twice committed to a psychiatric care unit. According to the forensic psychiatric investigation, has a “distorted perception of reality.”
Stefan Alexandersson, a spokesperson for the company that managed the facility, HVB Living Nordic, told GT that the “scope of the problems had not been evident until one or two days before the murder.”
February 27: The people at the public television channel Sveriges Television seem to be working hard to alienate the Swedish people. First, they chose a Muslim, Gina Dirawi, as last year’s Christmas Show host; two months later, Dirawi hosted Sweden’s most popular TV show — the music contest Melodifestivalen. This show selects the song that will compete in the next Eurovision Song Contest. During the show, Dirawi and a children’s choir sang Sweden’s national anthem “Thou ancient, Thou free” (“Du gamla, du fria“), but with the lyrics partly rewritten. Instead of “I want to live, I want to die in the North”, they sang, “I want to live, I want to die on Earth.” The show’s producer, Edvard Sillén, explained to the newspaper Göteborgs-Posten: “Melodifestivalen is not for those who get upset if the national anthem is changed. The focus should be on the people of this country who have ‘different roots.'”
February 27: An immigrant doctor, who as it turned out did not speak Swedish, sent a young man home with a prescription for antidepressants, even though the young man displayed clear signs of a having a brain tumor. The young man had come to the hospital, deeply concerned that one half of his face was drooping and that his speech was slurred. A few weeks later, it became clear that the young man had a brain tumor. The doctor has since been reported to the Health and Social Care Inspectorate, who may or may not end up giving him a warning. Why he works in Swedish health care without understanding Swedish, or possibly medicine, is still unclear.
February 27: Two “unaccompanied refugee children,” suspected of being behind a large number of mobile phone thefts in Stockholm and Uppsala, were apprehended by police. The “children” had snatched phones out of the hands of two girls, who were able to provide a physical description. The thieves, who claim to be 15 and 17, were arrested in a restaurant, but did not have the girls’ phones on them at the time. They did, however, have another stolen phone. They were taken into custody under the Aliens Act, but were later released.
February 28: The Swedish embassy in London says it thinks that the British newspaper Daily Mail has got Swedish immigration policy all wrong. According to the Swedish daily, Dagens Nyheter, the embassy has written a report to the Ministry for Foreign Affairs. The report claims that the paper is “campaigning against Sweden and Swedish immigration policy” and that “Sweden is being used as a bad example [of failed immigration and integration policies].”
The embassy says it is now trying to counter the negative image.
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