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Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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This is not the first time that the Home Office has used its discretionary powers to bar someone from entering the UK, nor surely will it be the last, but I cannot recall in my adult lifetime such powers ever being used against an elected, serving politician from a friendly, democratic country. And a member of the EU to boot!
Geert Wilders had been refused entry to the United Kingdom to broadcast his controversial anti-Muslim film Fitna in the House of Lords.
Mr Wilders said he had been told that in the interests of public order he will not be allowed to come to Britain.
Under normal circumstances, I would devote the rest of this article to speculation about the reasons behind this extraordinary decision. But, in this case, that would be redundant.
We all know why.
I am sure my title is no surprise to most of you, however the scale of the trouble is even worse than I had believed.
Unlike the fringe tribal areas, Swat, which has 1.3 million residents and a rich cultural history, is part of Pakistan proper, within 160 kilometers of Peshawar, Rawalpindi and Islamabad, the capital.
After more than a year of fighting, virtually all of it is now under Taliban control, marking the militants’ farthest advance eastward into Pakistan’s so-called settled areas, residents and government officials from the region say.
I very much hope there are contingency plans in place to blow the &$#^& out of Pakistan’s nuclear capability should worst come to worst. The alternative is a nuclear war against India in the name of Allah, resulting in the deaths of hundreds of millions in the region.
I ran across this interesting article a few minutes ago.
The educated conclusion right across the Middle East is that Iran is determined to become a nuclear power. How to deal with this conclusion is far more controversial.
“Indeed”, as our good friend Glenn is wont to say.
A civil liberties pressure group has called for the resignation of Prof Janet Hartley, the academic responsible for banning Islam critic Douglas Murray from chairing a discussion tonight at the [London School of Economics].
Modern Islamists will cut a women’s face if she uses make-up and kill women for such ‘crimes’ as being raped, but they are in favour of wild spending and printing (“expansionary fiscal and monetary policies for a counter cycle effect” as the scum of the Economist would put it) – even though such antics are actually denounced by the Koran.
That so many academics sides with the forces of radical Islam should come as no surprise – for the modern left (including modern mutant forms of Marxism that have combined Marxist and Keynesian doctrines in ways that Karl Marx himself would have had nothing but contempt) and radical ‘Islamists’ favour many (although not all) of the same economic policies – as Comrade President Barack Obama would have been reminded by both his leading Marxist (well mutant heretic modern Marxist) and leading Islamist neighbours in the Hyde Park area of Chicago. Although, of course, this is what he had already been taught as a child (both by his Mother and by Frank) and then at Occidental, Columbia and Harvard. Before he was ever sent to Chicago to join the operations of the Comrades there.
“You are off the point Paul – we are talking about academics and free speech”.
Well Pigou (the Cambridge ‘Economics’ Prof who Keynes implies was free market in one of the in-jokes in the ‘General Theory’…) held that anyone who questioned the need for more government spending should be sent to prison.
Collectivist academics have never been pro free speech (it would not be consistent with collectivism if they were in favour of free speech) – the academic that Dr Gabb attacks was following in the tradition of Plato himself.
The function of a university (as explained by Gramsci and Marcuse) is to produce minds indoctrinated with ‘progressive’ thought – so indoctrinated that any ideas that are hostile to the cause will be rejected by them (without consideration), and reject them with great hatred.
Universities are not totally successful – in that most students are just given a vague mind set of support for ‘progressive’ ideas and a built in hostility to ‘reactionary’ ideas, but only in a very loose way, enough to, say, vote for Obama – but not enough to kill for him. They become the sort of people who think the Economist is free market, laugh at the “humour” of the Communist comics on Radio 4 without actually sharing their ideology and do not see anything odd in the selection of books in British bookshops.
“But what has this got to do with radical Islam”.
Sadly quite a lot – as far from being seen as reactionary (with its hatred of women’s rights and so on) radical Islam is seen as progressive. And it is (if one defines progressive in the way the academics would) – Islamic socialism (the word “socialism” is used) is common among both the Sunni and the Shia radicals.
And communist groups (in spite of the atheism of Karl Marx and co) ally with them – look for the banners on the demonstrations (they are there). Students are taught to be anti-American (this will continue in spite of Comrade President Barack Obama) and anti Israeli – and anti capitalist. And radical Islam is all three. Therefore they feel vaguely “pro” it – in spite of its tearing women to bits, and so on, and so on… after all plenty of female radical Islamists can be found – and we must not be “culturally imperialist”.
As for reforming the universities – they can not be reformed. They must be de-funded – no more taxpayers money for them (directly or indirectly).
Oh and if anyone thinks I am judging the ‘educated classes’ too harshly, then spend five minutes in a British book shop (not just the wall of Obama books, but the other books you will find – and the books you will not find) or listening to the news (or film reviews) of private broadcasters such as ‘Classic FM’
They know their market – the people who accepted (or half accepted) the ‘progressive‘ ideas they were taught at school and university, such as a ‘progressive conservative’ leader who attacks ‘big government’ whilst at the same time explicitly promising to… increase the size of the government.
Following on from Perry’s post below, I am pleased to note that there is something we can do to help Geert Wilders.
For those among you who want to actively help, go to his website and donate what you can to help defray what will likely be a ruinous legal bill. The link is here.
Geert Wilders is one of the pitifully few public figures in Europe who is willing to confront the Islamist menace. As a result, his enemies have sentenced him to death (because all they want is peace, don’t you know) and his own government has decided to prosecute him.
Even if you cannot contribute financially then I urge you at least to get a message to him to let him know that he is not alone and that he has many, many friends. He needs them.
A court in the Netherlands has ordered the prosecution of Geert Wilders, leader of the Freedom Party, for daring to express his opinions. Wilders is the author of Fitna, a critical polemic against Islam.
The three judges said that they had weighed Mr Wilders’s “one-sided generalisations” against his right to free speech, and ruled that he had gone beyond the normal leeway granted to politicians.
“The Amsterdam appeals court has ordered the prosecution of member of parliament Geert Wilders for inciting hatred and discrimination, based on comments by him in various media on Muslims and their beliefs,” the court said in a statement.
“The court also considers appropriate criminal prosecution for insulting Muslim worshippers because of comparisons between Islam and Nazism made by Wilders,” it added.
This judgement completely destroys the myth of both Dutch civil liberties and the nation’s reputed tolerance for differences of opinion. It seems you can have a difference of opinion just as long as it is not inconvenient to the state for you to express it. Yet again, the Dutch state proves that when the going gets tough, the Dutch state has a backbone of rubber.
So here is Fitna for you to watch. And to the authoritarian thugs in their court in Amsterdam… up yours.
And as a little bonus…
Andrew Roberts, the UK historian, pens what can only be described as a robust defence of soon-to-be-ex-US President, George W. Bush. It has stirred up a hornet’s nest of comments, some of which include open support for OBL’s cause, which makes me wonder about who edits the Telegraph blogs these days, if at all.
Unfortunately, this piece suffers from a number of basic factual errors that make one wonder about the quality of the editing of the Daily Telegraph’s print edition, never mind the electronic version. He says, for example, that Oliver North directed a movie about Bush, when in fact he meant Oliver Stone. These Olivers are a bit of a pest: I mean, there’s Oliver Reed, Oliver Cromwell, Oliver Twist, and loads of others. It might rather tickle both Messrs North and Stone – one a rather controversial soldier, the other a former-soldier-turned leftwing filmaker, to be so conflated.
On a more serious note, though, Mr Roberts suffers from over-reach in his understandable desire to set the record a bit straighter. For a start, any believer in the small government brand of conservatism, even a hawk who supported the overthrow of Saddam and the fight against the Taliban, has to confront the continuing expansion of government and debt under the Bush administration. Bush went over the heads of Congress to support the bailout of the US auto industry. Then there is the whole nonsense of No Child Left Behind, Prescription Drugs, Patriot Act, and the rest.
As for protecting America from attack, it is true, that he deserves – as I said some time ago – some, if not a lot, of credit for the fact that there has been no major repeat of a 9-11 sort of attack on US soil since that terrible September morning; and yes, I happen to agree with Mr Roberts that paying a pure “wait-and-see”, defensive posture after that day was not really plausible.
Libertarians continue to argue among themselves, never mind with others and often vehemently, about the proper scope of foreign policy, or whether a libertarian foreign policy is an oxymoron. For me, the principle of self-defence cannot rule out the need, in certain circumstances, to go after declared enemies with a track record of violence and mayhem. Bush went after some of those enemies and made mistakes along the way. But I think, that on foreign policy at least, the judgement of history on this man will be rather kinder than at the present time.
Daniel Finkelstein says what needs to be said. Brilliant article.
Blogger and soldier Andrew Olmsted was mentioned on a Fox News report I listened to on the net tonight. His posthumous last post from January of this year seems worthy of Christmas Eve.
If I (and apparently he) are wrong and there is an after… I sincerely hope it is populated by souls such as his.
I have just heard on an infrastructure mail list that India has lost much international bandwidth and the problem is due to failure on the SeaMeaWea3, SeaMeaWea4 and FALCON submarine cable systems at Alexandria.
There were multiple failures in Alexandria just a few months ago if I remember correctly.
I agree with all those who are now saying that the England cricket tour of India should not be interrupted, in the wake of the terrorist attacks in Mumbai. My understanding of terrorism is that what makes it such a headache to defend against, given that in India people generally are not allowed to carry guns (correct?), is not knowing when or where they might strike. But if you have a number of set-piece, high profile events to defend, with definite times and places attached to them, you can. It will be cumbersome and tiresome, and expensive, with lots more frisking of people who look like they might be terrorists, and lots more frisking of people who do not look at all like terrorists, both to avoid upsetting people who look like terrorists and to make sure that any terrorist plan deliberately not to look like a terrorist is also guarded against. But if the authorities and people of India are willing to put up with all that, then so should our cricketers be.
I am even opposed to the final two one-dayers being cancelled, although I daresay the Indian authorities would not have had the time to make their dispositions, given that the one-dayers would have been very soon. But the test matches should definitely go ahead, including and especially the second one, which they have already, regrettably, moved from Mumbai to Chennai. I guess the Mumbai police have enough on their hands already, or think they have.
Playing those two one-dayers would have changed nothing in a cricketing way. 5-0 to India would almost certainly have become 7-0 to India, but playing those games, and the Mumbai test in Mumbai, would have made another and bigger point. I daresay that, because of their disappointing cricket, England’s cricketers are not now very highly regarded in India. This would be a chance to get back into India’s good books. Risky? Maybe, a little. But also, given the money now disposed of by India’s cricket fans and by Indians generally, to make this small stand against terrorism might also been, you know, rather lucrative. But headlines like Pietersen wants security assurances don’t strike the right note at all. This guy had a great chance to make a much more positive statement than that, but he muffed it.
As James Forsyth put it yesterday:
Imagine how we would have felt if after the 7/7 bombings the Australian cricket team had headed to Heathrow.
And commenter CG added:
Some of the star players in the Australian Rugby League team wanted the team to pull out of their English tour in 2001. When they were told that they would be replaced by more willing players, and may not get their places back, they decided to come after all.
I know, I know. The reckless courage of the non-combatant. But I didn’t stop using London’s buses and underground trains in the immediate aftermath of 7/7, still less run away to the country.
YouTube blocks Pat Condell’s attack on sharia in Britain. As my friend Geoff Arnold reminds us:
… as John Gilmore famously said, “The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it”. So here is the Condell video. Watch it, and pass the word along.
My favourite phrase (slightly paraphrased):
… a small child describing them as ‘letterbox ladies’ (women in burkhas), which was, of course, deeply offensive and so we had the child put to death …
If you are a Brit (resident or expat), please sign the petition that Pat mentions.
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